#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Four

Bee photo by Gretchen Hosking

Pollinators

Ground nesting
Insects
Bees
Burrow in dirt

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today’s (optional) prompt is a fun one. Find a factual article about an animal. A Wikipedia article or something from National Geographic would do nicely – just make sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot. Now, go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.

Good Afternoon and welcome to day twenty four of #NaPoWriMo where I did not follow the prompt strictly. I did read an article on ground nesting bees. We have had them in our backyard as far back as I remember. They are attracted to the flowers Shawn grows out there and the fact we never laid down grass or gravel. There is plenty of south facing bare soil in our backyard. Well last weekend Shawn was putting in new brick to finish off the look of the new patio we had put in in February and the ground bees were not happy with him. He was disturbing their homes. Since then we have noticed one bee flying in and out of the topsoil bag left from Shawn’s gardening in the spring of 2020. Poor bee did not chose a wise relocation; he’s going to be disturbed again if Shawn uses the soil for more planting.

Backyard Seating Area

Photo of the brick work Shawn did on what is now Speedy’s side of the yard. We now have brick at the back of the new patio to match. And some of our lovely flowers the bees and hummingbirds love to frequent. And for those curious my poem today is a Teacup dictionary poem. Another short poetry I enjoy writing. Ostentatious

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#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Two

Tortoise’s Summer Residence

Backyard Oasis

Backyard trees grow tall to offer shade throughout the spring and summer
Children play digging their way to China before vacation ends
Palo Verde – green stick bursting with yellow flowers in April

Palo Verde in backyard

NaPoWriMo Prompt – In a prompt originally posted this past February, Poets & Writers directs us to an essay by Urvi Kumbhaton the use of mangoes in diasporic literature. As she discusses in her essay, mangoes have become a sort of shorthand or symbol that writers use to invoke an entire culture, country, or way of life. This has the beauty of simplicity – but also the problems of simplicity, in that you really can’t sum up a culture in a single image or item, and you risk cliché if you try.

But at the same time, the “staying power” of the mango underscores the strength of metonymy in poetry. Following Poets & Writers’ prompt, today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place.

Good morning and welcome to day twenty two of #NaPoWriMo. I’m not exactly sure if I’m on prompt but when I read it last night the palo verde came to mind. Gretchen wrote a lovely poem about sitting in the backyard for her poetry class and the professor commented that her shade was generic and could be anywhere. I told her we have a lovely palo verde tree in the backyard, if you mention the tree by name he can’t fault you for being generic. So I think having a palo verde tree in my poem invokes a specific place. Also Gretchen and I were sitting in the backyard yesterday and it was very windy. I told her, you could have yellow flowers raining down on you in your poem. She wasn’t particularly impressed with that; Yellow flowers are shitting on us. Well okay (yes it was very windy) but I told her that’s not very poetic.

The middle part of my poem is a memory of when Robin and a friend dug a big hole in our backyard one summer. Pretty much in the same locale as Speedy’s summer residence. I’m not sure if their goal was to reach China, but I remember as a kid thinking it was a possibility if one dug straight down through the center of the Earth. Robin’s friend just thought it was cool they were allowed to dig in the dirt. The other reason for this poem besides trying the sijo form again is I told Gretchen yesterday I write poems about the backyard every April but haven’t written one yet this year. Oversight corrected Lol! If you read the link to my previous backyard oasis poem, I talk about how they are getting snow in April back east. Yesterday I saw all the lovely snow pictures from Buffalo. If you ask me that would be the proper usage for shitting on us.

#NaPoWriMo Digging

 

Backyard Seating Area

Tortoise’s Summer Residence

Outdoor Life

Temperatures start to rise
backyard Oasis
now a hot desert
black sunshade hangs over
morning coffee stop
blocking bright yellow sun
how long will this heat last?

Tortoise digs in the
rich brown dirt
moving into his summer residence
triple digits will most likely
stick around til September
ends                 green
bougainvillea thrives

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Because it’s a Saturday, I have an (optional) prompt for you that takes a little time to work through — although you can certainly take short-cuts through it, if you like! The prompt, which you can find in its entirety here, was  developed by the poet and teacher Hoa Nguyen, asks you to use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem. (You may remember James Schuyler from our poetry resource for Day 2.) This is a prompt that allows you to sink deeply into another poet’s work, as well as your own.

Good morning and welcome to day twenty-five of napowrimo. I read the prompt before I went out to my morning coffee spot. I’ve been sitting out there enjoying my coffee almost every morning since Shawn set up the table and bench at the end of March. He put a black sunshade over it yesterday. This morning as I sat and watched the dog and tortoise I was in a little cocoon. The second photo is of Speedy’s summer residence, notice the hole behind the fallen chair. He moved back into his other residence over the winter and just began digging out his summer home earlier this week.

Anyhow this is life as it occurs in my backyard. I’m not quite sure it answers the prompt exactly but it’s what came out of my free write. It’s almost noon here and I pretty much spent my morning writing, so I have to get going on housework.