Tomorrow will finish off another Poetry Challenge Month. April will turn into May, leaving behind a broad swath of verse from the international community of poets. It’s been an interesting year for those who write poetry. Life has landed many challenges into the laps of those striving to complete the task.
Some have made it through. Others have struggled and left the field, not because they wanted to, but because circumstances forced the issue. While I have a moment, I want to commend all who have travailed whether to the end or not. The effort is the thing in poetry, not quantity. There is always another day for writing verse, another inspiration waiting to spark the flow of words.
Brava! Bravo!
Now, on to the day’s task. I hope you like the offerings here.
Poetic Bloomings gave us another prompt for an Ekphrastic poem yesterday. Prompt 105—Ekphrastic poem—image Broken Eggshell. I always enjoy taking a spin through the image-o-dial for a writing prompt, and PB gave us a lovely little catalyst this week.
Remnants
Half an Easter eggshell,
Ju-ju bean left
Hiding under a leaf,
A tiny yellow bead
Fit for little girl’s gem;
Remnants of her
Passing this way on
Her path elsewhere,
Toting her Barbie
Overnight case and
Dora’s explorer jacket,
Making a matched set.
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Poetic Asides, on the other hand, told us to take a tine from one of the poems we’d written this month and to make that the title for a new poem. This is an old technique, which works beautifully; so well, in fact, that while I was going through to find just the right one for today, I came away with nearly a dozen to be used later for other pieces.
Lost in Time’s Distraction (Prose Poem)
Niggle, squirm, slide into another; a thought seeks escape from corralling attempts to place it with like kind. Who said thinking was easy and follow-through hard? When had that memory formed, lacing its tendrils through countless thoughts come before? Can one have a single thought, a stand-alone, untethered to those previous or or future? How is it a trail shines within shadowed labrynth mind to lead us to beginnings decades past, long forgotten otherwise?
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We’ve already done a foreign poem this month–a translation of nothing more than form and sound. Today’s stretcher of minds has us writing a poem that includes at least five foreign words. For this I’m fortunate. I studied French. Sister spoke Spanish and German. I have all three to draw on. This is a wild attempt of using three languages to draw from simultaneously. I don’t vouch for translation accuracy, but it was fun to try.
Summer Rain
Der tag slides toward der nacht,
Leaving behind la matineé
With its verde y oro,
Wisking by l’après midi et
Passing through anochecer,
Into night’s shadowed
Les rues d’amour or
Death-stalkers’ many lairs.
Vas ist dat?
El norte un grito de advertencia
of storm’s violent coming,
Along der strasse òu zappatos
Wait at doors as if for
Entrance to leur maisons.
Will rain’s schnell machen drops
Quitar life’s suciedad
As easily as those shoes.?
claudsy
Meena Rose
