michaeljarmer

#261: Picking Up Sticks

The assignment today from napowrimo was to try a poem with lots of repetition. I’ve been digging the suggestions. I think I’ve taken up the (optional) assignment every day. That’s been fortuitous. Here’s one about the yard work that follows a wind storm. Picking Up Sticks Today I am picking up sticks. Here’s a stickContinue reading “#261: Picking Up Sticks”

#260: On Fortuitousness

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”–Hamlet That broken tree branch swinging in strong wind, caught by the branches of another tree ready and cocked for catapult toward the truck in the driveway, finally let loose and fell. It missed the truck by just a few short feet. But a duck was hitContinue reading “#260: On Fortuitousness”

#259: Thirteen Views of Listening to A Song

I With my eyes closed, the lyrics become more vivid– like icicles in my fingers. II Bouncing up and down on a pogo stick, the drummer has all of my limbs and I have hers. III I watch that wave come up, a shimmering, a crescendo: some nonsense makes me cry a little. IV A man and a womanContinue reading “#259: Thirteen Views of Listening to A Song”

#258: Waiting for the Leaves

(after Mary Oliver) I’m sitting in the office space that adjoins my classroom while my student teacher is wrangling with a group of freshmen, and I am thinking about my oak trees. In this stark, small, white room, lit with florescent tube lights, desk littered with papers, student work to grade, a stack of booksContinue reading “#258: Waiting for the Leaves”

#257: What’s Hidden In This Poem

I have poet friends who hate poems about writing poetry and I think that’s all right, they can go ahead and hate that, but poets will continue to write poems about writing poetry until the cows come home and even after the cows come home because cows don’t give a shit, I mean they understand thatContinue reading “#257: What’s Hidden In This Poem”

#247: An Elegy for Spring Break

Goodbye to you, a week’s worth of mostly rain with a stretch of dry weather at the end, taunting us, forcing me out into the garage on Sunday night to fire up the grill. Even if I had nothing to cook, and even if it had continued to rain, I would have fired it up anyway, outContinue reading “#247: An Elegy for Spring Break”

#246: A Recipe

A Recipe Mix together in a bowl the following invisible things: Ad no alcohol, zero grains, absolutely no sugar, no beans, no milk, butter, or cream, and no other artificial anything. I have a bad feeling about this. Someone in the house wants to go healthy and I have agreed to play along. The partContinue reading “#246: A Recipe”

#245: The First Poem Written at the End of Spring Break

Here we go, full steam ahead, into my fourth consecutive year of celebrating National Poetry Month by writing a poem on every single day of April. If you are new to these parts, you might be wondering about the number in the title, in this particular case, #245. I’ve participated so far in three years of napowrimoContinue reading “#245: The First Poem Written at the End of Spring Break”

Finding My Way Back to Courage

At the turn of the new year in 2016, I resolved to live more mindfully, and in January I joined a local meditation group. A year and some months later, the group still meets every other week, is facilitated by a super competent, compassionate and knowledgeable guy who earns his living as a hypnotherapist. We spendContinue reading “Finding My Way Back to Courage”

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Last year, I remember talking in my classroom about the terrible news, the deaths of two British cultural icons, both personal heroes of mine, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, both dead at 69. And from that discussion, this has remained in my memory: a student actually said these words to me, “So you’ve got about twentyContinue reading “Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light”