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Poem #2

September 29, 2020 / JennyDetroit

Still reading The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Still writing my own poem each day.

This time, I picked eleven words from page 29 of the book: immunized, glass, desecrated, suitcase, astride, dust, strangers, photographs, stones, tomb, and collapsed. Then I used these eleven words in my own poem:

The strangers

rode astride

the dust tombs,

stones collapsed

beneath their

pride, desecrated

by the weight

of glass,

a pound of photographs,

and nothing left

to be immunized,

only a suitcase,

empty of letters,

dripping with

sand.

Poem #1

September 28, 2020 / JennyDetroit

I’m gonna try to read a poem a day, and then write a poem a day. Reading The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov; today’s poem was “Succession.”

My poem is below. It’s using a prompt called “Shuffle a Poem,” where you take five random album titles from your collection and use them to write a poem. The titles have to be used intact (although they can be separated by punctuation); no removing or changing words. Here is my shuffle poem:

I watched rain drops

Bleed the clouds

Until all soil ran red

And the seed at zero

Started to labor.

Gypsy punks say

“The stakes is high”

And they sigh when I

Put on my watering can,

Soaking everything

Too much, wondering

When the earth will

Grow up, and I will

Grow down.

No use. The organic duke

Has cast off his mantle

And settled down with the

Industrialist’s daughter.

Their progeny is sterile.

The orphan’s lament

Is thus: “The rain

Falls on the just and

Unjust.”

So the poets say.

Watering the garden

August 2, 2020 / JennyDetroit

What has been my “handmind” activity during “Covidtide”? Baking, perhaps. Making homemade shrubs and hummus. Writing in my notebook.

But I think it has been gardening. Or, at least, watering the plants. (And harvesting the fruit.)

I love the ritual of watering the potted plants and turning the sprinkler on in the raised bed. I love when water squirts inadvertently on my legs and feet, soaking my Birkenstock’s. I love feeling the weather: heat, humidity, breeze, leftover rain, morning dew. I love lifting the big watering can, swelling with hose-water, and pouring its contents over the thirsty leaves until their pots overflow. I love the way the tomatoes smell after they’ve had their drink.

I love the short walk from the kitchen’s sliding door, down the steps of the deck, across the well-trod brown grass — a path I have beaten over these many weeks — around the garden and to the hose. I love that I once saw a squirrel sleeping in the long grass under the spigot. I love that I’ve seen garter snakes and rabbits and dragonflies (and damselflies). I love searching for fresh pea pods amongst the tangle of leaves and stalks that have been their home and their mother. I love eating just one fresh cherry tomato from the vine as I gather handfuls to bring in the house. I love watching the cucumber plants flower, counting the yellow buds and dwelling on the small fruit that have begun to fill out and grow — one end deep green, with white prickles bursting forth all along the length of it — willing each small cucumber to reach maturity, like a mother watching over her children. I even love seeing our almost-ripe strawberries disappear overnight, nibbled and devoured by hungry chipmunks. Someone else is being fed by our garden. I love that too.

Even when the rabbits (or maybe it was a deer) ate the tops of the Swiss chard, I could only be mad for a day or two, remembering that these creatures have no grocery store or supermarket in which to shop. What mattered was the growing: planting the seeds, watching them sprout, watering them and hoping it was enough, and then waiting — with all the uncertainty that comes with it — until one morning, on my daily pilgrimage to the backyard, the broad red-green leaves had unfurled, strong and bright against the brown dirt, and the chard had flourished: a living thing, guided — at least in part — by the work of my hands.