Category Archives: Slice of Life

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

On this final day of March, at the end of another Slice of Life Challenge, my fifteenth year of writing about small moments every day for the entire month, there’s a certain sigh of relief. This year, I chose to do small poems each day, as my daily slices. In fact, these may be the first prose words I have used for a post over the last 31 days of the challenge.

I enjoyed the many moments, though, and it gave me a chance to weave my own mission of writing a small poem every morning into the Slice of Life. Now what am I going to write poems about? I’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose.

Some of my poems for the month worked. Some, didn’t. Or at least, not as I wanted. But I kept writing (see my other site for gathering poems, with the #sol22 hashtag as a gathering device) and I kept trying to connect with other Slice of Life writers each day — navigating between new folks I didn’t know but who deserved my attention and a small circle of folks who I am already close with, through past Slice of Life years, CLMOOC and the National Writing Project.

Here, then, is my poem as a slice for this last day. Thanks for visiting.

Words like these
have rhythm

They find internal rhyme
over time

Observable moments,
folding in

Noticed before,
but slant

Peace (before the calendar turns),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

Spindly sticks gathered
off my elderly neighbor’s lawn,
remains of a storm come, and gone,
as she pops her head out
and asks, curious, What’s going on?

I’m wandering around, my arms
full of broken fallen wood,
telling her with a smile
about bonfire we’ll make,
when the weather gets good

Peace (among neighbors),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

Each year’s Slice on the blog
on this twenty-eighth day
lands in a very predictable way:

It’s my middle son’s birthday
– as before and as yet to come –
I write of it, just a bit, here, today

Peace (in celebration),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

The stage seems crowded –
the saxophonist elbow to elbow
with the flutist, standing right above
the strings – a cello and two violins –
as the drummer smiles and shines,
keeping time with the bass,
and the guitarist/conductor
criss-crossing the air with hands
commanding the band,
listening for the vocalist, in a red dress
mirroring the energy of audience,
to sing us all into New York City:
an ‘Upper West Side Love Story’
told of the street of the beat of jazz

(Watching Freddy Bryant in concert at the Bombyx Center)

Peace (listening),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

Another night
of brackets, broken;
no one else hears
these curses, spoken

Peace (happens),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

March morning,
soaked in rain;
reminders, again,
of Winter’s descent
and Spring’s steady gain;
the wet sloshes
emerging buds
of flowers finding
root, in soil:
a change, ordained

Peace (in raincoats and umbrellas),
Kevin

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective and then all through March — every single day  …  You write, too.)

Another broken string,
singing the guitar
in pain, and here
I am, fretting the sound
on knotted neck,
playing the role of Luthier,
once again

Peace (sounding it out),
Kevin