Now, N could have stood for NaPoWriMo. To be honest, my first thought was the phrase, ‘Nice. Very nice, dear.’ but instead I’m letting you all in on a little nightly ritual that appears on my computer or iPhone screen as my Mom and I chat.
Nite Nite is our close,
the end of our nightly chat
nite nite. love you. k.sleep well. I love you.
it’s time to stop messaging.
night night. love. ok.Life’s small rituals
all happen for a reason:
night night. love. ok.
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself. — Alan Alda
My last day in New Zealand, I went to a “School Gala” which is like a rummage sale with fun games and live entertainment and food and all sorts of things to raise money for the school. It was very well attended by families and their school-age children but also by people from the immediate neighborhood and beyond, people looking for inexpensive things for their apartments or houses, and especially people looking for used books. That’s where we spent most of our bit of time at the gala – in a big room with a lot of other book lovers, flipping through many boxes of all sorts of books. If I’d been driving home rather than flying I might have brought home a few more treasures than I did but you know – weight restrictions made me be responsible and all that.
But! Marge handed me a slim volume and I plopped my $3NZ down for it. It’s by Elizabeth Smither, poems written while she was the third NZ Poet Laureate in 2001. This poem made me think of Mrs. Gail Burns and all my other shoe-loving friends and I admit to having a pair of loved red shoes too. (The poem immediately preceding this one in the book is called “Red Dress” which I like as much as “Red Shoes”. There’s another poem called “Shopping with Beth” which ends
and then, finally, I buy a black jersey
with a V neckline. I have heaps
of black jerseys, you have black shoeswe’ve just repeated ourselves, our
friendship is basic black, like the
little black dress, we regressbut in the last shop we choose
bikinis (as if we would wear them)
I choose black and you go for rainbow colours.
When I pulled out this book during my trip home, I discovered it was book number 179 (carefully hand written on a line) of a limited hardback edition of 2000 copies and now it has traveled far from its original home.
Red Shoes
Where the heel strap and arch strap
join there will be a blister at first
I know when I get them home
out of the box and the wrapping paper.They are the colour of red lacquer.
The colour of a beautiful chest
fastened with mock gold fastenings
and the maker’s name is in gold lettering.I shall wear them with everything
red complements which is everything
I own: those that fail shall be discarded
into bags for the Salvation Army.With red shoes who can doubt
the heart has a means of action
as feeling moves forward to accomplishment
as I stretch out my shod feet on the white sofa.— Elizabeth Smither,
Red Shoes, 2003, Random House New Zealand
I’ve continued to read the Ted Kooser book and it’s wonderful but my brain is thinking more about poetry than about writing something tonight. NaPoWriMo suggested a prompt which I accepted gladly as a starting point. I tried to keep some of the Kooser ideas in mind even though I had to write it as an “I” point of view. Here’s the prompt:
Today, I challenge you to write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self (i.e. “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”) This might seem a little meta at first, or even kind of cheesy. But it can be a great way of interrogating (or at least, asking polite questions) of your own writing process and the motivations you have for writing, and the motivations you ascribe to your readers.
So here it goes:
Dear poem, I’m not sure what to write about
or what form to use or how to rhyme you.
I’ve been reading about writing details,
considering the reader, and to catch
the large, important things and small moments,
to note how they feel or what happens next
rather than always telling my response.
I may write about cats far too often.
Tonight I truly lack inspiration
and nothing has caught my eye or my mind.
What will the readers think of all this?
Will they welcome the break from cat haiku?
Oh thank god, they’ll think while reading this poem,
we couldn’t deal with another whisker.
Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.
