#NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt

Shawn and I recreate “The Kiss”

Kiss
Together
Couple recreates
Painting hanging in bedroom
Art

NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt – Today, we’d like to challenge you to spend a few minutes looking for a piece of art that interests you in the online galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perhaps a floral collar from the tomb of Tutankhamen? Or a Tibetan cavalryman’s suit of armor? Or a gold-and-porcelain flute? After you’ve selected your piece, study the photographs and the accompanying text. And then – write a poem! Maybe about who you imagine making the piece, or using it. Or how it wound up in the museum? Or even the life of the person who wrote the text about the piece – perhaps the Met has a windowless basement full of graduate students churning out artwork descriptions – who knows?

Good morning and welcome to the early NaPoWriMo Prompt. I did not pick a piece from the Met website though Maureen speaking of art work reminded me of the #gettymuseumchallenge everyone did in the early days of the pandemic and since Shawn has The Kiss by Gustav Klimt in our bedroom; I thought it would be the perfect piece for us to recreate. I also noted I posted the work without a poem back in May. So this has been rectified. And as my readers know, I prefer short poetry forms this is an oddquain a variant of the cinquain with an odd syllable count instead of even. Here is the #haikuchallenge I wrote today about it too. Note – at a count of 17 syllables an oddquain is very close to haiku.

Early pandemic
No one wants to be lazy
Recreate The Kiss

Poetry is Fun

Poor Gretchen is forced to take a poetry course this semester, and she thinks her mother is a pain during #NaPoWriMo – ha! this year she’ll be buried with poetry too. Her first poem was due yesterday and she lacked inspiration. I don’t think she found my form of inspiration inspiring.

There once was a lady named Gretchen
Who earned a living as a dolmetschen
She spoke German fair
And knew Fräulein from Herr
But could find no translation for Frettchen

At least my child wrote free verse and did not have to worry about creating any forced rhymes. But it’s been a few years since I wrote a limerick and they’re always fun to experiment with even when they aren’t that good.

Gretchen and me 1st day spring break

Since ASU canceled spring break this year, I grabbed an old photo of Gretchen and me.

Hummingbirds – Sure sign of spring

Sitting on back porch
Hummingbird buzzes my head
Sure sign spring is here

Good afternoon readers. Yesterday I got a text from Gretchen while she was supposed to be in German class; There’s a hummingbird outside my window. I think it was distracting her away from the computer screen. I just laughed wasn’t anything I could do about it. Later in the afternoon I went out into the backyard to enjoy the sunshine and as I was sitting on the back porch I heard a loud buzzing. I turned my head slowly and said, I hope you’re a hummingbird. Sure enough a huge hummingbird was hovering right near my ear. And of course I had to ask, You wouldn’t be the same hummingbird bothering my child earlier, would you? The bird didn’t answer me and flew off.

It seems every spring the hummingbirds enjoy our aloe. Here are a couple haiku I wrote two years ago about the birds and spring. And last year Patricia shared my hummingbird haiku on her Pea TV moment (once again hummingbird capture credit goes to Gretchen). This year is no different the aloe and hummingbird are once again a favorite subject in my haiku.

2021 Haiku Expo

Thank you to the Arizona Matsuri haiku expo judges for selecting one of my haiku for honorable mention. My other entries were:

Cactus shadow grows
Sun sinks below horizon
Ochre sky above

Canada geese honk
Flying over winter home
Snow covered cacti

Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month

Mind over matter
The body is feeble, but
I have strength of will

Good afternoon and welcome to a whole year of isolation aka March again – Women’s herstory month and cerebral palsy awareness month. Last Friday Gretchen and I walked over to Kohl’s to do some shopping. It has been over a year since I’ve walked any sort of distance (the reason why I got winded on the little hike Shawn and I took when camping) and believe it or not it’s been close to three years since I did any clothes shopping. Other than that, this past year has been the same old routine for me. I did submit a few haiku to the Arizona Matsuri haiku contest. The 2021 ebook should be out soon. And I have been keeping up with the haiku challenge on twitter; I only missed a couple days in February and March.

Shawn has artwork up in the Erotic Show at the Alwun house. Today is the last day of the exhibit. I went to the poetry festivus back in February. Then we celebrated Shawn’s birthday the last weekend in February; one more year until the big 5 0!

In the aftermath
of erotic poetry
blush tingles your cheeks

Half a century
is sneaking up, already
Forty nine years old

Still sitting at home
Outside socialization
Effectively blocked

House never empty
Reflect on lost solitude
Block off alone time

At the beginning of this screwed up year I wrote about my same old routine, after all I don’t get out of the house much and not being able to go out was not all that different for me. I actually posted on Facebook one year ago today that I had to watch episode seven of Star Trek Picard for the fourth time before watching the new episode just released. Everyone was home and had to catch up on the series; it was a big sacrifice on my part. 😉 But as the month wore on, I realized I had no alone time. A year later it’s not so bad; Robin is up in Oregon and Shawn has been out of the house working so it’s now just me and Gretchen; and she has been pretty occupied with online classes. Especially since ASU took away spring break.

This has been my year of isolation. How has everyone else faired?