(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Fifteen: The Poet, Alone

The poet
stops to think
of the subject
of matter at
hand, takes a
drink in pause
to better
understand,
draws a line
of a letter to
the edge of the
paper, the
first ink mark
of what might
later become
the possibility
of a poem,
imagines a
gap from
subject to
pen, the writer
at home, alone,
again

Peace (writer, write peace),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Fourteen: Sleep Pen Dream

Coyote phantoms
howling dreams,
last night’s
moonlight cracking
through the seams …
I’m writing poems
again in my sleep,
some deep pen
scribbling lines
trying to keep up
with the madness,
just out of reach

Peace (in the moment of waking),
Kevin

We Are Wire (Poets of the Pandemic)

A Found Poem gathered from within: Dispatches from the Pandemic
Via The New Yorker magazine, April 13, 2020, pages 34-49
Original writers: Ben Lerner, Rick Moody, Weike Wang, Vinson Cunningham, Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Maggie Nelson, Donald Atrim, Karen Russell, and Bryan Washington

Look skyward at this hour
to clock this moment –
for our burdens
are not equally
distributed; the statistics
break down

We need other people’s voices,
for we are not born wired
– We are Wire –
calling through these faint
networks toward the heart

When fear and loneliness
seem to last an eternity,
and in reversal, fragility; greater –
this is when the outside
looks most like empty streets,
flat, with new calm

Maybe we still will bear witness
to these mad dashes of love,
imagining each stranger’s head
crowned by a saint’s halo

All of us are somewhere,
searching for Shalom;
the window signs beckon us:
We, the failed poets
of the Pandemic –

the unstressed syllable
the embodied rhythm
the heartbeat
a pulse

Peace (and poets),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Twelve: The Egg Said

The Egg said,
Don’t crack me
open – I’m in here,
hoping to hide

Peace (for Passover, Easter, or just Sunday),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Eleven

Ode to the Resting Spot on the Mill River
Leeds, Massachusetts, USA

This place is forever different
from the ways we remember:
rock bridges turn asunder;
broken tree limbs buried,
the writer’s left, to wonder:

of ice dams of December;
flooding from September;
the March release of mountains;
summer’s gentle fountains;

All enact their toll,
taken as payment,
for infinite hands
relentlessly carving
this river line

These lands we think we know
remain a mystery, an unknowable
force scrambling its way to ocean
with no worry of the wreckage
left behind

Note: This is both my daily poem and my Water Poem Project today — combining the two morning writing activities together — sort of like, two currents swirling together.

Peace (forever in motion),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Ten: Rather Blustery Days

The Thousand Acre Wood
never had it this rough –
the wind today is tough –
so bear, if you’re there,
take care, you ragged
bag of imaginary fluff

Peace (batten down),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Nine: Take Time Today

If ever there’s been permission
to stand closer and attentive to the land,
to notice what you didn’t notice before,
consider it today

Take time today
to see the soil in new light,
the way new grass sleeves bend
in twilight, damp with dew
and moonlight

Take time today
to inhale the fragrance, the flowers
whose tight winter slumbers turn over
and whose form functions
as unbound

Take time today
to eavesdrop on the songs of skies,
bright birds warbling warm symphonies
in tree-top serenades, to each other,
for each other

Take time today
to listen, let it be the world’s love
let it be something stronger than hope,
holding us together, standing today,
in this moment

Peace (awakening in the local),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Eight: John Prine’s Mind

All the people
populating the mind
of John Prine
will forever linger on,
odd characters like us
seeking balance
on bent lines

Note: Songwriter extraordinaire John Prine died from complications of Covid-19 yesterday. He was always a writer with a guitar, exploring the landscape of characters.

Peace (leaves us vacant),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Seven: Night Breaks Day

Beneath the Super Moon,
night breaks
morning
into day –
whether hopeful
or hurtful,
it’s too soon to say

Peace (in possibilities),
Kevin

(I am participating in National/Global Poetry Month as I continue to write small poems each morning. – Kevin)

Day Six: Shimmer in the Rust

Like you
I devour the news
searching for
shimmer in the rust,
solid in the dust;
a voice I can trust

Note: I created a small experimental music piece I wrote on thinking of the ways I am drawn as a news junkie into the confusion of the messaging of any given moment these days .. I feel as I am forever reading between what is said, trying to figure out what’s true … Listen: https://some.audio/5e8af43b28d3ee0fa995101c

Peace (is dissonance),
Kevin