Poetry Friday: My Cruel Invention Giveaway

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! Let's celebrate the end of a week during which the cruelest invention, Death, took the lives of cultural icon David Bowie, poet C. D. Wright, and actor/ heartthrob (at least to me) Alan Rickman.

Where is the poetry action this week?
At Keri Recommends!
I recommend you visit her site
for more Poetry Friday goodness.

This week, I am giving away a copy of the new poetry anthology MY CRUEL INVENTION to one lucky reader. Post a comment to be entered into the drawing. The book is "An outstanding collection of poetry about inventions and inventors, real and imagined," edited by poet Bernadette Geyer. [Quoted from back cover.]

More about the book in a moment. First, a few important announcements for fans of Author Amok.

First: I'm moving my blogging HQ to my newly refurbished website. I'll continue to post Poetry Friday entries here at Author Amok through January 29. As of February 1, you'll find me at my new blog.

Second: I am hosting the fourth (wow!) annual daily poetry prompt this February, with some help from my friends. The theme this year is FOUND OBJECTS. You will find a full explanation of this year's daily poem project at my new location. Past daily poem projects and National Poetry Month series will remain here at Author Amok, so you'll still be able to access those posts.

Now, on to MY CRUEL INVENTION. This cover! The Green Man goes Steampunk.

Find out more on Goodreads.

Check out some of the poem titles from this gorgeous little collection:

"The Rube Goldberg Contraption for Kissing" by Karen Skolfield
"Jekyll's Apology," by Kathryn Rickel
"A Physics Haiku," by Keith Stevenson
"I am a Geothermal Heat-Pump" by Nolan Liebert
"Dance with Rocket Shoes" by Alex Dreppect
"Edison's Elephant, 1903," by Tanis MacDonald
"Catherine de Medici and the High Hell" by Marcela Sulak
"Cadaver Feet" by Karen Bovenmyer

One of my postcard poems, "Eyes on the Back of My Head" is also anthologize here.

I reached out to poet Marjorie Maddox, who has given me permission to share one of my favorite selections from the book with you. I love how time travel underscores the layered interactions between parent and child in this poem.

H.G. Who?
by Marjorie Maddox

"I'm going back in the time machine;
I'll be right back," my daughter hollers
from the backyard when it's time
to set the table. I let her go
off into that world of minutes
cartwheeling backwards
and upside down into the oblivion
of imagination I once knew
in that past she's hurtling toward.
I stay where the seconds click
toward pot roast and green beans,
which she'll later leave on her plate,
off to visit the  moon
or that strange new solar system
calling to be discovered.

First published in The Same 10, no. 1, 2012. Posted with express permission of the author. All rights reserved.

You can learn more about Marjorie Maddox and her work at www.marjoriemaddox.com. Or check out her book of poems LOCAL NEWS FROM SOMEPLACE ELSE, which includes "H.G. Who?"

Available from Amazon.

Would you like a copy of MY CRUEL INVENTION to call your own? Leave a comment -- that's all you have to do. I'll choose a winner on Wednesday, January 20.

See you in the stratosphere, fellow travelers. There's a starman, waiting in the sky.

Poetry Friday: Leaving Home, Part 3

Before you do anything else, Dear Readers, go check out this First Chapters Critique Giveaway. 

Linda Baie is hosting today at Teacher Dance!

As the mom of a new college student, I keep finding poems that speak to parent-child relationships, especially the moment of leaving home.

This week, I was reading A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAIL, by Lisa Vihos. I picked up her chapbook at the 100 Thousand Poets for Change World Conference in Italy this summer. Lisa and I had been Facebook friends for a few years, but met for the first time in Salerno, greeting one another with a warm hug.

Lisa Vihos

Lisa is a fine poet, educator, and community organizer. So much about the poem I am sharing today speaks to me: the olives, memories of Italy, and how we create experiences for our children, never knowing how or when they might draw on these memories as they grow into adulthood.

Planting a Memory (for Owen)

by Lisa Vihos

I make us a lunch

for the train ride from Chicago to Milwaukee.

Granted, it’s a short ride

but it’s lunchtime and we’ll want to eat.

I pack salami, bagels, tangerines,

and a small bag of kalamata olives.

I want you to know this simple pleasure:

olives on the train. How delicious

they taste as we speed past houses and fields.

Olives run in our family, you know.

Our own special comfort food,

tumbling down the Greek

and Italian branches of our family tree;

little dark nuggets of love.

Someday, you’ll be in Tuscany

wanting to impress a girl.

It’s important that you learn

this sense memory now

so that when you’re standing in the market

outside the train station

you will not hesitate

to buy good olives for her.

You won’t even know why you do this,

but she’ll love you all the more

for spending a little bit extra

on something that tastes so good.

And when you are rushing together

past the lush green fields

and crumbling stone walls

of your Tuscan future,

bite into the rich, dark meat

feel slick oil on your fingers

lick salt from your lips and smile.

In her olive black eyes, there is warmth

and a beckoning road like a train track

vanishing into the distance

connecting you to something

(or someone) that loved you.

Lisa was kind enough to tell me about the genesis of this poem:

I really did pack a lunch for me and my son, to nourish us on a train ride from Chicago to Milwaukee. He was nine years old at the time. While I was on the train, I started thinking about how little things like olives could make a subconscious impression on the mind of a child and I started to write the poem while we were cruising along. He is seventeen now, and I when I read the poem, I still remember exactly what it was like to think about him at some future time, remembering olives on the train with his mother. 

Lisa Vihos is the Poetry and Arts Editor at Stoneboat Literary Journal and an occasional guest blogger for The Best American Poetry. Along with two chapbooks, A Brief History of Mail (Pebblebrook Press, 2011) and The Accidental Present (Finishing Line Press, 2012), her poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She has two Pushcart Prize nominations and received first place recognition in the 2015 Wisconsin People and Ideas poetry contest for her poem, "Lesson at the Checkpoint." She is active in the 100 Thousand Poets for Change global movement and recently returned home from the group's first world conference in Salerno, Italy. Visit her blog at Frying the Onion. 

For a companion poem (more olives! more travel!) check out Poetry Friday blogger Joyce Ray's "In Search of Athena" here: http://joyceray.blogspot.com/2015/07/of-athena-greece-and-olives.html

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAIL is available for purchase from Pebblebrook Press. If you are interested in buying one, please follow the link or mention it in your comments.

In this series:

Leaving Home (Poem by Linda Pastan)
Leaving Home, Part 2 (Poem by Sharon Olds)

Leaving Home, Part 2

Thank you for all of the kind, supportive words as we send our son off to college, Poetry Friday friends! I appreciated your comments last week.

Today was the big day. I dropped the kid off at the airport first thing this morning. I was teary, but I did not cry! By noon, he had made his way to CWRU, found his dorm room, and met some fellow early-arrivals. His texts started to get a little cagey after that. When he began to tease me for being nosey, I knew he was fine. Whew.

Sending our guy off into the world got me thinking. Robbie had just finished 5th grade when I began working on the manuscript that became THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY. This summer, Advanced Reader's Copies of the book began making their way into the world. The ARC has been traveling around the country, paying reading visits to my fellow 2016 debut authors.

(Where in the heck is THE LAST FIFTH GRADE? Find out on this map.)

It's an odd feeling, knowing that the book (and child) you spent years preparing for this moment is finally *out there.* It's out there having experiences with people you've never met. They are forming opinions about something (someone) that's not you, but is a huge part of you.

I'm grateful for author friends
who have welcomed Ms. Hill's
fifth grade class into their homes.

There's always a comfortable
place to stay during a visit.

Sometimes the book gets to go
on field trips, like this one to Lake Erie.

And there are new friends to meet,
like Abby Cooper's Lou,
and his pal Squishy Giraffe.

I am amazed at the parallels between a child leaving home and a published book. As a parent/author, you've reached the point where you've poured every skill, lecture, ounce of wisdom, and experience that you can into your baby. He's had teachers, mentors, coaches, and relatives to support his growth. Now he has to put everything he's learned and experienced to use and make the best of it.

Thanks to Amy Ludwig VanDerwater for sharing this poem with me when I was feeling anxious about packing our son up this week. Sharon Olds' observations speak to me, both as a mom who is launching a child, and as an author getting ready to launch a book.

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

by Sharon Olds

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't
have by now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do. With a pencil and two
Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and
grapes he is on his way, there is nothing
more we can do for him. Whatever is
stored in his heart, he can use, now.
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on. What he does not have
he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one
folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,
onto itself, and onto itself, until
only a heavy wedge remains.
Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now...

Read the rest at The Writer's Almanac.

My dear friend Heidi Mordhorst is hosting Poetry Friday this week. Get out your fresh fruit and your juicer and join her for a cup full of delicious poetry at My Juicy Little Universe.

Thanks to the Sweet Sixteens debut author group for the photos! You guys are the best. Let's just hope my son is as good about sending pictures home as you are (ha).

Leaving Home

Today is my son's last Friday at home. This time next week, he will be settling into his home for the next four years: Case Western Reserve University.

He's a Spartan. Just not one of *these* Spartans.

I say "settling in" when I really mean "riding the rollercoasters." Yep. He's kicking off college with a pre-orientation trip to Cleveland's famous Cedar Point amusement park. Talk about letting go. The amusement park trip means sending our son ahead, alone, to begin his new life and meet his new classmates. We'll follow behind in the safe, slow van -- never mind that its nickname is The Mars Rover -- carrying all the stuff that college students need.

It's been an emotional last few weeks. What's speaking to me today is Linda Pastan's poem "To a Daughter Leaving Home." Replace the bicycle with one of the biggest rollercoasters in the United States, and you'll have a perfect metaphor for how it feels to be the one watching from the good, solid ground of home.

College life is going to be a rollercoaster ride.
This one is called Maverick.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up...

Read the rest at Poetry 180.

To all of the other parents who have teens leaving home for the next big adventure -- group hug!

Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
is hosting Poetry Friday today.
Hi, Tabatha! Good luck to your Vandy girl
as she heads out for her next year of school.

Poetry Friday: 8th Grade Dance

Poetry has been in the news lately. We lost Maya Angelou on May 28 and this week gained a new U.S. Poet Laureate in Charles Wright. But I'll leave others to laud Wright's work this Poetry Friday.

To find those poetry posts and more, visit Catherine Johnson's blog. Thanks for hosting Poetry Friday this week, Catherine!

There is only one "current event" at the Shovan household this week: Tonight's 8th grade dance.

Our central Maryland school district doesn't believe in pomp and circumstance ceremonies, except in the case of completing high school. Instead of walking across a stage to receive a middle school diploma, my daughter has a bevy of smaller celebrations. Tuesday was the 8th grade picnic. (My prize for chaperoning, a tick bite on the ankle.) Next Friday, there will be a slide show and awards celebration.

Tonight is the big event. I'll spend the afternoon decorating the school with other parents. The theme is "Glow in the Dark." My daughter almost wore a black t-shirt dress with hand-decorated with glow-in-the-dark paint (which would have been SO COOL), but opted for a traditional party dress.

We had a last minute panic as she realized her shoes did not match her dress. It was Mom to the rescue with a pair of pink sandals. Whew!

There is a favorite poem playing in my mind this week. It was written by one of my early writing mentors, Maria Mazziotti Gillan. I have known and loved this poem since before my daughter was born. It's strange to find her here -- at this moment of becoming -- which Maria describes with such clarity.

My Daughter at 14, Christmas Dance

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.

After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read

all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding. I am frightened, guard my
tongue for fear my mother will pop out

of my mouth. "He is not shy," I say. You giggle,
a little girl again, but you tell me he
kissed you on the dance floor. "Once?"
I ask. "No, a lot."

We ride through rain-shining 1 a.m.
streets. I bite back words which long
to be said, knowing I must not shatter your
moment, fragile as a spun-glass bird,

you, the moment, poised on the edge of
flight, and I, on the ground, afraid.

Source: MariaGillan.blogspot.com

Poem from Where I Come From, Guernica

Here is Maria, featured on PoetryVlog.

Source Poems: "Mother to Son"

For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.

Our guest blogger for today's source poem is poet and children's author Jacqueline Jules.

Jacqueline Jules

MOTHER TO SON

by LangstonHughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Source: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Books, 1994)

Located at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177021

My Ethical Will: “Mother to Son”

by Jacqueline Jules

“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes comes as close to an ethical will as I could ever write to my own sons and grandchildren. Life may sparkle brilliantly at times, but it is not a crystal staircase. Instead of shining steps transparently waiting to lead us to our dreams, we must face tacks, splinters, and “boards torn up.”

My work as an author and a poet has been fraught with as much rejection as success. This year I had two picture books published. NeverSay a Mean Word Again took 16 years from idea to publication. What a Way to Start a New Year required 24 years. In June, Stronger Than Cleopatra, a poetry chapbook I’ve been working on for 20 years, will finally be made available to readers through ELJ Publications. I am intimately familiar with “reachin’ landin’s,” “turnin’ corners,” and “a-climbin’ on.” Rejection is a part of a writer’s life and choosing to sit down every time it happens means being stuck on a rotting staircase with your head in your hands.

This is not to say I haven’t been tripped by other things. Grief has certainly tempted me to sit down on too many occasions. I lost my first husband when I was 37 years old. My parents died nine months apart. Less than two years ago, I watched my only sister painfully succumb to a debilitating genetic disease at the same time another family member was diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I question my ability to handle what may lie ahead. The height of the staircase is daunting. It offers no view of how many steps must be climbed before the next landing. And if I feel weak and lean too hard on the rail, it sways.

Perseverance, as portrayed so eloquently in “Mother to Son,” has redeeming power. To keep “a-climbing on” and “turnin’ corners,” even when it means “goin’ in the dark” is to recognize that better alternatives do not exist. The narrator in this poem provides both a courageous model and a challenge. If she keeps climbing when her life hasn’t been “a crystal stair,” then her son can face disappointments, too. A parent with a stubborn streak is a powerful inspiration. The voice in my head that keeps me moving when I’d rather collapse often sounds exactly like my father’s.  

The staircase beckons, even when there are “places with no carpet on the floor.” Our job in life is to keep climbing. To accept that life is supposed to be meaningful, not easy. 

And when I reach my final landing, I hope it will be said that I always had the courage to follow the sage advice Langston Hughes offers in “Mother to Son.”

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum, coming in March from Finishing Line Press, and Stronger Than Cleopatra, coming in June from ELJ publications. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Inkwell, Soundings Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, Minimus, Imitation Fruit, Calyx, Connecticut River Review, and Pirene's Fountain. She is also the author of two dozen books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, No English, Sarah Laughs, and Never Say a Mean Word Again. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Thank you for sharing your personal connection to this poem, Jacqueline. The stories that we have been telling in connection with source poems have made this a powerful National Poetry Month series.

Here is a word animation with a dramatic reading of Jacqueline's source poem, "Mother to Son":

Previous posts in this series:

Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams

Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan

J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)

Diane Mayr on a haiku by Basho

Jone MacCulloch on "We Are Waiting (a pantoum)" by Joyce Sidman

Mary Bargteil on Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Poetry Postcard 43: Happy Birthday, Robbie!

I am skipping ahead to Poetry Postcard 43. Why? To wish a happy 16^th birthday to our son and eldest child, Robbie.

Robbie and cousin Caspian (age 1). All you parents
of teen boys know, photos of the kid are not
easy to come by. Most of them look like this:

because teenage boys are
masters at the art of avoiding photographs.
Remember "How not to be seen?"

I wish my scanner were working this morning so I could show you what a cute baby he was, and how the nurses put Valentines in his hospital bassinet.

I was planning to write an occasional poem for Valentine’s Day today. I had a vintage Valentine’s postcard all set. (Thanks for the donation, Linda Baie!)

But my poetry gut got all tingly when I read what was printed on the back of the card: THIS SIDE FOR CORRESPONDENCE.

A few weeks after I started the Poetry Postcard Project, I took an old mini-album off the bookshelf. Instead of photographs, we’ve kept years of postcards in the album’s sleeves.

Some of the postcards date to before Rob and I married, 1991. The most recent cards date from the late 2000s. They come from all over the U.S. and several countries. They were sent to us by friends and family.

Postcards sent from (clockwise) Aruba, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Australia.

Reading through the messages on the cards, I was surprised that many go beyond the standard “Wish you were here,” sentiment. Some are funny. Some are lyrical. Others refer to specific events in our lives.

Guided by the phrase, “This Side for Correspondence,” I began pulling sentences and greetings from various postcards into a found poem. It wasn’t until I read a mention of Robbie’s impending birth that the theme of my poem came together. That focus allowed me to figure out which pieces of the poem would stay and what could go.

This Side for Correspondence:

Postcards “Found” on My Son’s 16^th Birthday

Dear Ones,

Greetings from Aruba.

We are alive & well.

The food is good. So glad

we are here, but miss you.

It’s really as beautiful here

as the picture depicts.

Balmy breezes, the smell

of jasmine in the evening.

The way people

get still and quiet

watching the sun setting.

There are a lot

of cranky babies here.

You sure you want

to go through with this?

Laura Shovan

And here are the cards I borrowed from, sent from my brother Jason Dickson, friends Jenna and Ron Olson, and two from my mother, Pauline Dickson. Thanks for helping me out on this one, gang!

"So glad we are here. But miss you."

"Dear Ones... Balmy breezes, the smell of jasmine in the evening,
the way people get still & quiet watching the sun setting."

"It's really as beautiful here as the picture depicts...
There are a lot of cranky babies here --
you sure you want to go through with this?"

"We are alive & well.... The food is good."

I like the way the stillness my mother wrote about from Hawaii balances with my friend Jenna's half-joking concerns about the potentially cranky baby on his way to us. (You can read the postcard poem written for my daughter's birthday here.)

Robbie is already thinking ahead to college, so I'm going to enjoy these birthdays while he is still at home. I am looking forward to Robbie's favorite things tonight: pizza and a rich chocolate cake. If I'm lucky, I'll get a hug. And maybe a photograph.

Postcard Information:

THIS SIDE FOR CORRESPONDENCE.

Series No. 2425 PRINTED IN GERMANY

THE ADDRESS TO BE WRITTEN ON THIS SIDE.

Poetry Friday: An Elegy

On Monday evening, a dear friend's son passed away. He was 15.

I first met Grant, his mother and his sister in the spring of 2002, when they joined our Moms Club playgroup. Grant and my son, Robbie, were going to be in the same kindergarten class that fall.

Kathy and I became friends -- talking about how school was going for the boys. I could sometimes provide her with day to day insights, through Robbie, into life in the classroom. Kathy appreciated these insights because Grant had cerebral palsy and Robbie was (what they call in edu-speak) typically developing.

My son is in the mashed-up  middle row. Grant is in the front row.

"Can you ask Robbie if they went outside today?" Kathy might call and ask. There was mud on her son's jeans and she had no idea how it got there. I will never forget the day she called me, thrilled, because Grant's aide had sent him home with a map. Not a normal map -- this one explained the various, multi-hued stains on Grant's T-shirt. Some came from lunch, some from an art project, some from recess.

Another time, she called me, laughing. At recess, Grant's aide had been approached by a serious little boy. He thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to ride Grant's wheelchair down the slide. That was my vehicle-obsessed son. (I drafted a picture book about this incident. Maybe I'll go back to it some day.)

Due to redistricting, the boys ended up at different schools, but Kathy and I stayed in touch. The kids saw each other for birthday parties, or get togethers, but less and less frequently. When my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, Kathy understood the frustrations of coping with the school system. She helped teach me how to be an advocate.

She also understood the process of letting go of that fantasy kid all of us create during the waiting time of pregnancy or before we take home an adopted child. We all let go of that fantasy at some point, as we parent a real, wonderful child -- a human being -- with all of his strength and weaknesses, all of her needs and wants.

Losing a child is unbearably painful. I am hurting for my friend. It was a gift to have her son in our lives. I had planned to share an elegiac poem by a well-known poet. Instead, I wrote about one memory of Grant.

The Map (firstish draft!)

by Laura Shovan

She emptied her son’s backpack every day

after the bus put up its wheelchair lift and drove away,

after she rolled him up the ramp and through the door.

Once there was a map in his backpack, mirror image

of the pale blue T-shirt she dressed him in that morning,

ironed and clean, now streaked with God-knew what.

The map of his shirt said a black smudge was finger paint

(it was nearing Halloween, his aide wrote,

they were doing spiders), green was grass from recess,

the glowing orange splotch – not a pumpkin –

Miranda “borrowed” a highlighter from the teacher’s pen jar,

drew a lopsided heart on his shoulder. The brown was chocolate

(they told Robbie not to share his MnMs, but…)

When her son died, she thought about the map.

If he had worn a map on the last day, what would she know?

The spider and the grass, the misshapen heart,

chocolate melting on a quiet tongue.

Today's Poetry Friday host is Karissa at the Iris Chronicles. 

Poetry Friday: Happy Birthday William Stafford

I've been away from Poetry Friday for a while, but I could not pass up William Stafford's birthday.


Stafford was born January 17, 1914. This week marked his 98th birthday. His first collection, Traveling though the Dark, won the National Book Award in 1963 (he was 48, all you late bloomers). "Ultimate Problems" -- oh, on my all-time favorite poem list!

Some time ago, I started a poetry project. I began writing response poems to each of Stafford's pieces in The Darkness around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford. (It's one of my favorite books of poetry.)

The project's beginnings were accidental. A line in "With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach" prompted a memory of observing my child in the snow, after the blizzard of 2003. I titled the poem with a phrase from "With Kit, Age 7": "An Absolute Vista." You can listen to Stafford's poem here.

Sometimes it was a line of Stafford's that prompted a memory or image for my own poem. Or it could be the title, the theme, even something in the feel or tone of the poem I was trying to capture. One of Stafford's poems perplexed me so much that I opted to take a short phrase, "fingers into stones," as a jumping-off point. The resulting poem is a surreal meditation on aging.

Recently, life has gotten in the way of continuing with my project, though I did write about a half dozen response poems. I hope to pick it up again some day.

Today, I'm sharing an original poem, written in response to one of Stafford's.

Here is his poem, "Passing Remark."

Passing Remark
by William Stafford

In scenery I like flat country.
In life I don't like much to happen.
In personalities I like mild colorless people.
And in colors I prefer gray and brown.
My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
says, "Then why did you choose me?"

Read the rest (and more poems) at Friends of William Stafford.

My response poem involves a passing remark, but has deeper resonances with Stafford's piece. It appears in my chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone.

Tomorrow Is Going to Be Normal

by Laura Shovan

Walking home from the school bus, my son says,
“Tomorrow is going to be normal.”
He speaks with the confidence of relief.
When every day is the same, he can breathe.

Each morning, I tell myself,

Today, is the day --
I wait for the remarkable to land on my shoulder
or call me on the phone.

Sometimes it is a fortune written on the tag of my tea.

Sometimes it is a bird. Other days
I miss the quiet calling to attention.
I go to bed tired.

My son knows there is comfort in monotony.

Do I really want the phone to ring? It could be the lottery
or a hospital calling. He thinks my life is enough:
the mildness of the room when I am the only thing moving in it.

No. I must begin each day

wanting the next few hours to jolt me out of sameness.
He shakes his head. That we could be so different
we both find remarkable.

This was not a "normal" day.

Poet Robert Bly interviewed Stafford for the introduction to The Darkness around Us Is Deep (which includes such well-known poems as "Traveling through the Dark," "Fifteen," and "Ask Me.") Bly asked about Stafford's practice of rising early to write each day. He said something like, "What if you're not so good that day?" And Stafford replied, "Then I lower my standards." I love that.

If you're as fascinated with Stafford as I am, here is an interview with his son Kim. It's a beautiful meditation on his father's writing space and daily practice. His book, Early Morning, is one I'm putting on my wish list.

Happy Poetry Friday. I'm going to celebrate by playing with my box of Haikubes. I'll post some of the results soon.

Elaine at Wild Rose Reader is our Poetry Friday host today. Stop by her blog for more poetry posts.