Okay, in theory, I am three poems behind and have none for today. (Yet.)

To cover for April 23, I took Joanne’s wonderful suggestion about the camels and wrote a small acrostic whose final line makes up today’s title.

To cover for April 24, I wrote from a line in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha which Jaime quotes from.

First a shadow, then a sorrow,
lapsed from wood to covered road.
First a ballad then lament
as footsteps brought the traveler home.

Spin the world as I spin forward
searching for the light inside,
testing self against all darkness,
bringing shadows on the ride.

While we bring the wider sorrow
home, home sings its own lament:
where once was fire and love embracing,
all but what we’ve brought’s absent.

To cover for April 25, I stole wrote something inspired by Diane’s comment on dandelions:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
creep dandelions through the sunlit hours
to the last photosynthesis of time.
They’ve lit each of our yesterdays, we fools
who weed by chemical, hand-pull them out,
their candle color fading down to shadow,
their tale deemed insignificant
no matter what our lawn-borne fury.

You can guess that I prefer weeds to manicured lawn, I take it?

Ah, well, I’ll have to manicure twice tomorrow night; three risings-above-drivel may be enough for tonight.

This does not approximate my sadness; I am sure more will arrive but these three lines want no accompaniment:

give me back my shadow,
the wind so dark
I’m only pulse and starlight

How much I have missed being here!

There’s a painting hanging on the hotel wall. I am struggling for inspiration. Hence:

What does this still life say
About my human body?
Too crass, too gross, inflexible,
Without the grace to yield
To gravity where once I grew
Against it’s guidance?
Neither delicate nor burgundy
Nor fixed in time.
I’m grateful to be quick.

Muse misses home, I guess. Three stabs at something which started “You cannot negotiate with terror” and has not successfully gone somewhere.

One of the halau at Merrie Monarch did a dance in the name of Keku`iapowa, who was the mother of Kamehameha the Great, and her craving to eat a shark’s eye. And it ran out into a good draft so I’m only going to put a few lines here:

It is the gods put a taste in my mouth, a destiny
I will transform by teeth and tongue and gut and bring forth
into the world as dance and song and shit
and a son…

This one I definitely want to come back to next month, as it is one of two successful poem-things about Hawai`ian women.

Inspiration from Silent Thunder didn’t come out entirely like I intended but I may come back to the first few lines for another take:

The world is smells before sound,
sound before crashing light,
light—at the last—fading into savannah.
To pay attention is to move
your trunk into and out-of everything
lit up in infrasound. Your hide, your song
part of the dripping, steamy, rumbling mess.

I took my cue from Peg and so here is my poem:

All I want is to sleep
in my own bed.

G’night.

Ekphrastic! And I can’t spell, especially French.

Usually I object to woman as object
but for a couple hundred yearS
she’s stood gazing adoringly
at Daguerre’s bust, uplifted
arms mid-drape and full of laurel
and I pity her, her whole life
watching his dark face stare
somewhere else.
Perhaps I could pity him
were he more than mind,
a solid chest or fine ass
on display as much as she.
But it’s her naked back,
the low cut of her robes
that greets the viewer,
not the world or this man’s eyebrows.
Pity me, pity you,
for we echo her pose.

I met Lo and her husband today, which was great fun. I hoped all the poem talking would inspire something. Here they are, heartfelt appreciation for the beauty of their relationship:

When the boat comes
I will follow you.
I won’t set out before.
The wide world’s done
it’s wandering with me
and there is just one trip
I’ve left to take.
Alone. But never first,
No matter how the nerves
default to panic
or endorphins buoy me
above fear’s waterline.
You say you’ll follow me,
you won’t set out before.
The ship will kiss the sand
with us still arguing.