#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Eight

Obituary Paul M Tiger 1989

Paul M Tiger

I met and fell in love
in grade school unaware
she was an older woman.
We married in 1932
and raised four children.

I lived most of my years
in the garden state
and spent summer hours
toiling over the vegetables
I grew in my backyard.

Married over fifty years
my beloved wife, Estelle Ellett
preceded me in death.
One afternoon in June
I was found by her gravestone.

Gravestone – Estelle and Paul Tiger Photo: Randy Tiger

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today, I’d like to challenge you to read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead. Not a famous person, necessarily – perhaps a remembered acquaintance from your childhood, like the gentleman who ran the shoeshine stand, or one of your grandmother’s bingo buddies. As with Masters’ poems, the monologue doesn’t have to be a recounting of the person’s whole life, but could be a fictional remembering of some important moment, or statement of purpose or philosophy. Be as dramatic as you like – Masters’ certainly didn’t shy away from high emotion in writing his poems.

Good afternoon and welcome to day eight of #NaPoWriMo. I’m not sure I have the exact flavor of the prompt down. But the memories I have of my grandparents are few. I do remember the garden my grandpa had in his backyard and driving on the tractor with him when we would visit. I also remember when we moved down the street on Nottingham; I had found some little seed and planted it in our new backyard before the sod was placed down. My grandparents came to visit and I walked my grandpa over to the seed I planted. He saw the sprout and told my mom to leave it. He wasn’t sure what it was but was curious enough he wanted to see it grown and harvest. So the first summer in our new home, one corner of the backyard remained a dirt patch. And come fall we discovered my little seed was Indian corn. We pulled it and my mom used the one ear (it only grew one) as fall decoration on the front porch.

#NaPoWriMo Backyard Garden

Tortoise enjoys a treat

Backyard Garden

Tortoise
surveys his kingdom
slow and
methodical

Little dog
scurries about
seeking an audience

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today’s (optional) prompt is ekphrastic in nature – but rather particular! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive speared on its horn, a man using an owl as a pool toy, or a backgammon board being carried through a crowd by a fish wearing a tambourine on its head, I hope that you find the experience deliriously amusing. And if the thought of speaking in the voice of a porcupine-as-painted-by-a-man-who-never-saw-one leaves you cold, perhaps you might write from the viewpoint of Bosch himself? Very little is known about him, so there’s plenty of room for invention, embroidery, and imagination.

Good morning readers and welcome to day six of napowrimo. I’m not sure my septolet is exactly on point, but back in my early bird post I wrote about how Shawn has been working on a garden in our backyard. He also put together a nice sitting area (where Gretchen and I took her birthday photo with the  pink garland filter). I have been spending my mornings out there, drinking my coffee. It is also where I was reading my book. Since I finished the book, I decided to take my poetry journal out there this morning hoping for inspiration. The septolet came from watching the dog and tortoise interact though I’m not too sure I’d really call it interaction. The tortoise seems to tolerate the dog’s nonsense.

Well my coffee is finished and my poem is written so I guess I have to get on with my Monday. I hope everyone is hanging in and finding inspiration in their everyday life. As I wrote later in the day yesterday –

Wish for excitement
Life continues as normal
Keep towel handy

Yes, my life has had barely a blip with the stay at home order, but if any alien ships show up in orbit I do know where my towel is. 😉 And no I would never intermingle two different sci-fi domains.

#NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt

Wikipedia Photo Credit

Flowers are in bloom
Hear the pyrrhuloxia sing
Signs of spring abound

NaPoWriMo Early Bird Prompt – And now, in the spirit of an early-bird prompt, I’d like to invite you to write a poem about your favorite bird. As this collection of snippets from longer poems suggests, birds have been inspiring poets for a very long time indeed!

Good Afternoon readers! I thought I would introduce you to the pyrrhuloxia more commonly called the desert cardinal as in actuality the cardinal is my favorite bird, but since living in the desert for over 20 years now; I’ve grown to appreciate the beauty of my desert cardinal. And for those, who like me, look at the word pyrrhuloxia and wonder how in the world do I pronounce it.

Shawn has been busy working in the backyard cleaning and planting. This morning I went out there to enjoy my morning coffee and watch him work. The #haikuchallenge word today is channel. Of course, I used my morning as inspiration.

Enjoy morning sun
Stop flipping TV channels
Excuse the bed head

Gardner hard at work
Channeling his green thumb to
Grow vegetables

And since April begins tomorrow, there is a birthday to celebrate on Saturday. Poor Gretchen already feels her birthday gets a bum wrap. She never had any luck with birthday parties as so often her birthday falls near or on Easter and then when she was in high school she learned it was the day MLK was assassinated. Arizona will be on a stay at home order as of 5pm today; so yeah Gretchen gets to celebrate another year #ForeverAlone (as she puts it). I’m hoping she will get a wonderful social distancing surprise this Saturday through social media and turn her frown upside.

Birthday approaching
Channel positivity
Over doom and gloom

Well if you’ll excuse me, I’ve whittled my morning away writing and daydreaming in my backyard. I best be off to do something productive today. I’ll see everyone again tomorrow for the official kick off of NaPoWriMo.

 

Kumquat Funny Little Fruit

Be sure to eat peel
fruit inside will leave bitter
taste behind – I’m a…
Kumquat

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 27 – Many poems explore the sight or sound or feel of things, and Proust famously wrote about the memories evoked by smell, but today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that explores your sense of taste! This could be a poem about food, or wine, or even the oddly metallic sensation of a snowflake on your tongue.

Welcome back to day 27 of NaPoWriMo. It is the last week of classes for Rachael, final exams are next week. As her gardening class has no final it is the last week. She has been bringing home some of the harvest including a few kumquats. This morning she told me how to eat them. I never thought about how to eat a kumquat before.

Nasturtium

CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Wikipedia

Nasturtium leaves
add some zing to salad greens
with hint of radish

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 5 – In honor of Mary Oliver’s work, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is based in the natural world: it could be about a particular plant, animal, or a particular landscape. But it should be about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. Try to incorporate specific details while also stating why you find the chosen place or plant/animal meaningful.

Here we are on day five of NaPoWriMo. On the first day I told you Rachael is taking an outdoor eduction course at ASU. She is also taking a garden class. She learned about the nasturtium flower and told us how it tasted like radishes. Well Mom wanted a taste and she brought home a couple leaves last week. Whew! They definitely have a kick.

Meanwhile Gretchen is not feeling well and stayed home from school today. Poor girl has slept the morning away. I need to get set up to work, the new adventure I told you about the last day of March. It is online so I am able to work from the comfort of home. Great gig for someone who can’t drive. I need to check on Gretchen to see if she needs anything before my work day begins.

If the little American sentence was not enough poetry to satisfy your nature needs, here is one I wrote on Desert Spring Silver Birch Press published a couple years ago. Enjoy the rest of First Contact day.

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 5

 

Honey Glazed Baby Carrots Photo Credit    

 

Little girl tugs on
green leaves, astonished to find
long orange carrot

Green leaves in garden
pique curiosity, how
can a long orange
carrot be found dangling
root vegetable hid from view

True story. When Rachael was 3 or 4, Dad had a garden in the backyard. One of the vegetables he planted were carrots. Now I don’t know if they were heirloom carrots, but long orange fit for my poem. Plus to a three year old yanking on green leaves to reveal an orange carrot… I wish we got a picture of the look on her face.

She saw the green leaves and asked her dad, “What is that?”

“Carrots.”

Oh no, he wasn’t going to fool her. She knew carrots were orange. Dad told her to pull on one of them. She did and an orange carrot came out of the ground. Here is the website I used to find heirloom carrot names.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – April is a time for planting things (at least where I am, in Washington DC – you may still be waiting for spring, or well into some other season!) At any rate, I’ve recently been paging through seed catalogs, many of which feature “heirloom” seeds with fabulous names. Consider the “Old Ivory Egg” tomato, the “Ozark Razorback” or “Fast Lady” cow-pea, “Neal’s Paymaster” dent corn, or the “Tongues of Fire” bush bean. Today, I challenge you to spend some time looking at the names of heirloom plants, and write a poem that takes its inspiration from, or incorporates the name of, one or more of these garden rarities. To help you out, here are links to the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the Baker Creek Seed Company. Also, here’s a hint – tomatoes seem to be prime territory for elaborate names. And who knows, maybe you’ll even find something to plant in your garden! Happy writing!

RIP Leonard Nimoy

Garden at Cosanti in Phoenix, AZ

Perfect moments lived
Memory cannot erase
Live long and prosper

Five days ago, Nimoy’s last tweet was:

‏@TheRealNimoy
“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”

Here’s to living in every moment and cultivating perfect memories. The beautiful garden picture was taken by my wonderful husband. Today is his birthday. Unfortunately now that he is 43, he is no longer the answer to everything in the universe. But come November I’ll be able to take over the answer department 😉

LLAP Spock you will be missed but not forgotten.