A poem a day for a month – Page 20

#380: Poem on April 6, 2021

I’ve been in the habit of writing these little preambles before the poem of the day. Today, the preamble will be necessarily short, as the following, I hope, speaks for itself. I didn’t like the prompt for today, so invented my own out of desperation and some inexplicable afternoon blues, and it was, simply, toContinue reading “#380: Poem on April 6, 2021”

#379: Poem on April 5, 2021

So 8 p.m. rolls around and I’m suddenly apoplectic: I haven’t written a poem! My god, I haven’t written a poem! Fortunately, no one witnesses this tizzy. My wife and son are at rehearsal. I’m home alone. Only the dogs see the tantrum. I feverishly check the Napowrimo site. Nope. I’m not doing that. ExpediencyContinue reading “#379: Poem on April 5, 2021”

#378: Poem on April 4, 2021

Happy Easter, friends, and happy 4th day of April, the 4th day of National Poetry Writing Month. Easter’s not a huge deal in my household. There’s candy around the house, an egg here or there, usually plastic, and filled with, you guessed it, candy. The real eggs are in the fridge and they are whiteContinue reading “#378: Poem on April 4, 2021”

#377: Poem on April 3, 2021

I must say that the prompt for the day on NaPoWriMo left me feeling uninspired. Actually, it was not a bad idea, something about making yourself a deck of cards, a “personal universe deck,” and drawing cards from it to inspire a poem. It just seemed too labor-intensive for me today. So I will beContinue reading “#377: Poem on April 3, 2021”

#376: Poem on April 2, 2021

Happy 2nd of April, friends, and the second day of National Poetry Month. The sun is out. And after a full day of looking at a computer screen, teaching kids and grading their work from a distance, and spewing imaginary lectures to recalcitrant seniors in IB English, I had to take a break. I satContinue reading “#376: Poem on April 2, 2021”

Congratulations: You’ve Written Another 30 Poems. Now What?

May 1st and May 2nd I spent all day both days not writing a poem. I continued not writing poetry on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. It turns out, no poetry was written into the days and the week ahead, so that today, on the 10th of May, I have written not a single poem.Continue reading “Congratulations: You’ve Written Another 30 Poems. Now What?”

#374: Ode for a Colleague Leaving

You are a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with in the best possible way; students say they are afraid of you and yet they love you, clearly. What they fear, actually, is your disappointment, not your wrath; although, to be fair, you can be wrathful– I’ve seen it with my own eyes;Continue reading “#374: Ode for a Colleague Leaving”

#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku

My sophomores, under the gentle tutelage of a wonderfully gifted student teacher, are distance learning about imagery, beyond the sort of rudimentary understanding that imagery is language that appeals to the senses, into a deeper knowledge that imagery plays on both the intellect and the emotions, that it is associative, that it often works bestContinue reading “#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku”

#371: Monday Review

I’d give it two stars. I’d say that so far, its performance has been uneven, like it can’t decide really what it wants to be. Heavy rain early, then cloudy, then a clearing, dry enough for a dog walk, but too damn warm. Muggy, almost. Monday has forgotten that we live in the PacificContinue reading “#371: Monday Review”