Happy National Poetry Month 2023! Curious about what I’m doing? Want to play along? Read more here.
[Heads-up: If you’re visiting regularly, please know that the bold, blue text is what I’m writing fresh each day. The black text is the same each day:>) ]
There were a lot of dark and struggling words in yesterday’s pile! Something about “wail” and “darkness” and about how lonely a ghost might feel called out to me, and I wrote this.
The book that immediately came to mind for me has nothing to do with ghosts. It’s Jamie Swenson’s Chirp!: Chipmunk Sings for a Friend, a fantastic picture book with a lonely main character.
I’m also thinking about aloneness and how grateful I am to NOT feel alone. Although my visiting sister went home a few days ago, I found a lovely print she left behind for me. It’s of birch trees and a freighter on Lake Superior, and it fills me with peace. She saw how much I loved it when Randy, Patty, and I visited Smith + Trade Mercantile in Stillwater last week. Randy and I hit JoAnn with my 40% off coupon yesterday, got a frame, and I hung it up immediately!
And I shared my daughter Annabelle’s GoFundMe online yesterday. She and her family are in danger of losing their home due to her medical bills. The generosity of my friends, many who don’t know Annabelle and/or know nothing about her medical struggles over her whole life, sort of brought me to tears. I have rarely felt LESS alone. It makes me think that the real ghosts are those people still alive, but completely alone.
It’s amazing what thoughts a paper covered in magnetic words will bring up.
Oh, and tomorrow night is the virtual book launch of 8 gorgeous nature picture books. I’m hoping we 9 book creators won’t be alone along with the Red Balloon Bookshop host. If you’re free on April 25 at 6:30 p.m. CT, I hope you’ll join us as we extend Earth Day celebrations into this week :>) Free, but registration required. Just click the image on the left for more info and to reserve a spot. Thank you!
What words will we be digging through today?
And here’s the card that we might pull our topic from:
So some possible topics are:
- giraffe
- cheetah
- leopard
- dalmatians
- spots
Will you join in? Would love to see what you come up with!
- Intro to what I’m doing this National Poetry Month
- ALL the Digging for Poems drafts I’ve written this month
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- What is National Poetry Month?
- My previous National Poetry Month projects:
5 Responses
That ghost is very plaintive and her loneliness is haunting. I think it’s true what you said about real ghosts.
So here’s a mystery poem. I am not a big reader/solver of mysteries now. Although back in the day, I read lots of Nancy Drew. And I like the Encyclopedia Brown series for young readers into solving mysteries.
Mystery
Curious
Search for knowledge
Stress
Torment
Surrender
In adult reading, almost all I read is mysteries, so I’m happy to see this, Diane. I like how the first three lines could be about a scientific or philosophical mystery, but then the last three make it clear it’s more of a criminal mystery. And–yay for Nancy Drew (read all of these as a kid) and Encyclopedia Brown (my husband loved these as a kid)!
Laura, what a beautiful poem and your introduction about not feeling alone and Annabelle feeling supported makes it even better.
Diane, I found the mystery in yesterday’s words too. I like the detective-like “search for knowledge”
Mystery
Wailing darkness
Hideous assassin
Foul torment
Stressy search
Then surrender
Full book
Denise, I like you got the book in the mystery, too!
Ooh, this packs a punch. Love the surrender–wish every search ended that way. The wailing and darkness were irresistible, weren’t they?