PAD Challenge #3: Apology

For every moment I have faltered,
or chosen to run away, it comes to this,
that moment I must humble myself.
No reason or rationale or flimsy excuse
separates me from that awful reality, the knowing
our days are numbered and 
intentions are simply not enough.

So I will revel in each of these numbered days, 
these loves, and this constructed reality.
I have lived long and well. When that last night comes,
I will go gently.



Robert Lee Brewer's prompt today for National Poetry Month (PAD poem a day) was to write an apology poem . . . or to write an unapologetic poem. This morning, facing down two April challenges, my thoughts turned to limits that we all face, and one at least I don't think of often, but this last month has been full of death.

April National Poetry Month: #1 and #2

Already I'm behind in following Robert Lee Brewer's challenge to write a poem a day through Poetic Asides. Yet here are the first two poems for April, the first I've written in a very long time. Brewer provides the prompts, and we write. PAD means poem a day.

PAD Challenge #1: Communication

Al punto, together

Violin and viola, two musicians,

a man and a woman face each other,

al punto, together,

perfectly in tune and time,

fast, then slow, measures of

Bach, then Mozart,

and then Bach again.

The notes in phrases answer each other,

balance and circle round, counterpoint.

Each player nods to the other,

a pause,

each lifts a bow,

and music fills up the room.

PAD Challenge #2: Visitor

At first you are as nebulous

as a sonagram’s image

traced on a screen by an anonymous technician,

your heartbeat, faint but fast, 

a thump, thump, thump

that makes your parents stare at each other in wonder,

unable to forget the very essence of you,

nameless, temporarily floating inside,

filling a certain span of months with hope

and mystery, a future tiny child-to-be,

a visitor who will always be welcome.

About April . . .

April has its writing challenges. National Poetry Month -- a poem a day with Robert Lee Brewer from Writer's Digest's Poetic Asides and new to me, Blogging from A to Z, a blog hop with daily blog entries. Most days I find it easier to write on my current project (Years of Stone, historical fiction set in mid 19th Century Tasmania) and leave my blog to languish. But this April, prompted by writers from the IWW (Internet Writing Workshop), I will take on both challenges.

And continue work on Years of Stone. On good days, the writing is fun, the characters talk to me, and the story unfolds in dialogue. I can see Tasmania of 1842, sense the conflict between characters, their desires and their realities, and the words spill onto the page. My goal is simply to finish the draft by  the end of 2012. OK, maybe by the end of summer. My word count is 50,000 so far; goal maybe 70,000 to finish the story.

The biggest unresolved plot question I have right now is tied up with smart-mouthed secondary/main character Mary Dallow. Mary survived the four-month voyage to Hobart Town by sleeping in sailors' quarters whenever she was bored (did I say this story is not YA and not a bodice ripper?). She found work at a waterfront tavern, fell in lust with a bushranger, and serves as a conduit between the two main characters -- Mac (a transportee) and Deidre (Mac's fiance who follows him to Tasmania). So, would Mary (despite her many travails) jump to get married? I'm beginning to think not. Or would she?

Some mystery writers start with a dead body and figure out who-done-it by the end of the book. Maybe Mary Dallow will let me know what she really wants . . . by the end of the book! But whoever she winds up with will have to be her equal, no pandering to convention for Mary, even in 1842. Unless . . .

Let's get serious . . .

No one can say what will happen
to Mother’s handkerchief embroidered in blue,
the journals, the drawings, scraps of poems,
love letters tucked in favorite books,
packed and unpacked again and again,
the dried flowers from my daughter’s wedding,
the quilt blocks begun and nearly finished,
a favorite cup with yellow cats.
No one can predict
who will come to take all this away,
not even with the most careful preparations,
not even with the most trusted friends.
I’m remembering an old Greek woman
who lay in state on the floor in an empty house.
I only hope for kindness
even from strangers on that final day.


This poem began with Robert Lee Brewer's Wednesday Poetry Prompt 134. His prompt reminded me of a scene from Kazantzakis’ film, “Zorba the Greek”(1964). A wealthy woman dies in a small Greek village. The priest, learning of her death, finds the house ravaged by hordes of villagers who took even her bed, leaving the house empty and the woman laying on the floor. This happens here, though in more civilized ways.

Whistling girls and crowing hens . . .

I never understood
why I couldn't whistle
or strut.
I stuck my nose
as deep as anyone
into books,
even as my blonde hair
and breasts
labelled me bimbo.
And then I did
finally understand:
No woman on the moon.
no Amazon won my battles.
Stone by stone and
step by step,
I learned camoflage,
how to talk football,
how to run meetings,
how to push down walls
and rise to my own ends.

This prompt comes from Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides. Choose an adage, make that adage the title of your poem. I instantly remembered hearing my mother tell me as a young girl that "Whistling girls and crowing hens come to bad ends." That wasn't quite as bad as "men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses," but I always felt I could whistle if I wanted to. This poem comes out of that rebellious time when I did have blonde hair, worked by day at a conservative bank, and at night, went to college.

Beneath the Surface

We chat at breakfast, our forks
move over scrambled eggs, bits
of ham, the fresh baked roll,
hot coffee with evaporated milk,
cafe con leche in a hotel lobby,
anonymous, and yet, in these moments,
morning begins, another day,
the headlines around us, sound bites rising
like birds to the sun,
hints of rosemary and the sea.

Later we walk where bones were tossed
down the mountain side,
Moche sacrifices made in another time
and at the proper season,
the mountains to the east,
the river below,
140 million bricks for the sacred place of the sun,
and for the Huaca de la Luna, the decapitator,
amid images of the sea, pelicans and cormorants,
a peace loving people, so it was said,
that is before the bones were found.



Yesterday we visited the Huacas (sacred places) of the Sun and the Moon to find the most marvelous freizes, a truly amazing temple, every bit as inspirational as any colonial Baroque church we've visited here in northern Peru. Excavation is slow, much has been lost to looters and the weather. Even photos do not do justice to this main plaza, about the size of two football fields, decorated with five levels of freizes, each level about 5 to 6 feet high, each with a different theme. I can shut my eyes and still see a line of warriors holding hands. Are they dancing? Are they singing? Archaeologists use pottery and painstakingly slow research to name these icons of Moche culture, and change their minds. Behind the temple, the Cerro Blanco, a singular mountain, rises, so named by the Spanish, yet the people here say White Hill Temple is not the proper name. This is the Temple of the Moon.

Additional pictures of the Huaca de la LunaÑ are at www.huacadelaluna.org.pe and www.huacas.com

The prompt comes from Robert Lee Brewer's prompt 046 Beneath the Surface.