The Green Wave

NaPoWriMo is swimming along, and me with it, writing poems nearly everyday – and catching up when I miss a day. Here’s one from the this week. What I like about doing this is the sense of discovery. I began writing a poem about flowers wilting and ended up writing about how beautiful it is to move with the flow.

Hope you’re feeling life’s flow these days.

The end of the tulips
Ah, let’s not be sad that their seeds spilled
not on some patch of honest earth
but instead on the kitchen counter
as I cut them down two inches
to give them one more day.

Yes, they are like ballerinas
dancing ever lower to the stage
in their shining pink gowns
that spiral open in descent –
but let’s not dwell on the comparison.

And yes, we could so easily read
our shared fate in the brief flare
of their existence and mourn them
and everyone we have loved
who is gone. But not tonight, OK?

Right now they look more like
glamorous pink snakes
or a debauched hydra stumbling out
of the bushes. Look at them. Don’t you think
there’s something a bit sexy

about this business of letting go?

Kate Chadbourne
4 April 2008

is here again and I’m riding on that beautiful horse, writing a poem every day. And happily, I’m not alone but in the company of students and friends, and also thousands of other poets across the country.

For people like me – people who prize spontaneity over planning, who are often late, who forget appointments sometimes – committing to a regular once-a-day action can bring up a little resistance at first. “Hey, I’ll write poetry when I feel like it, when the Muse speaks, when the moon is full, etc…” The problem with this is that the moon is only full once a month. You write a lot less poetry when you’re waiting for a mood to strike. Just think if we thought this way about, say, flossing. “Yes, I’m open to flossing. I’ll do it when I’m in the mood, or when Flossy, the Dental Muse, speaks to me.” Sounds like a good way to get a whole new set of teeth (false ones, that is).

The miracle of regular poetry-writing, music-making, picture-painting, or whatever your fancy, is that you make the commitment and then find that you actually ARE in the mood. Turns out the Muse is speaking to us quite a lot of the time and we’re bundled up in ear-muffs and wool hats. The once-a-day habit is like taking off all this muffling wool at the first sign of spring and hearing the birds again.

It’s not heroic. I don’t spend hours writing these poems, but minutes. Some of them are more like poem-lings than actual poems. But there they are, a rough poem-frame that someday might be a poem-house with a little extra carpentry. For now, a poem-frame is enough.

Last year I printed out the whole stack of thirty poems and could not resist riffling through them again and again. Such a thick sheaf! In exchange for a few pleasurable minutes I get to feel like a productive, creative dynamo. I get to strut a little. Sweet!

Try it in your own art and see what you think.