Happy Wednesday, friends! I hope you’re all enjoying your week. For those of you who may not be aware, and for those who are too overwhelmed with other things right now to be focused on this (know that I feel you and am here for you), April is National Poetry Month.
For the entire month of April, I’m going to do my best to post a poem every single day by an amazing poet—weekends included. I think, especially right now, we need as much art in our lives as we can get, and I like knowing I’m contributing in some very small way to the resourcing of that.
In my own work, I’m also aiming to write a poem each day, and to write a minimum of one new article per week. I’ll either share them here, or provide links to where you can find them. I’m not so worried about actually pitching and submitting right now; I only have so much energy, and I’d rather put it into creation, rather than pushing for publication, for just a little while.
Though, I want to mention, for those of you who are using this time to focus on larger goals, I have a writing group that is focused on getting your writing done, seeking publication, marketing and growing your readership. Whether you’re a poet, a playwright, a freelancer, a novelist, or anywhere in-between, I’m confident there is useful information in that group for you. If you’d like to check it out (it’s totally free), make sure to keep scrolling after the poem, and join the free Facebook group. I’d love to see you there.
Okay, enough of the logistics for tonight! Here is our Poem of the Day:
ON MY WAY HOME
A great horned owl sits in the window
of a silo along the highway. The foundation
of the barn is now rubble, its boards salvaged.
My mother has scraped and painted the wood
into plant stands. On the other side
of the highway, flames chew clean
to the steel skeleton of a sedan, its body
barely identifiable. Firemen stand close
with the hose, but no water comes through.
There’s no ambulance. The lake
has recently frozen over. Yesterday,
firemen gathered on it, jumped hard
to collapse the shell and fell through.
Each body tall in a black dry-suit, then,
only a watery hole where they’d stood.
The mother of one of the men watched
in the snow beside me. Just then,
my son was in biology class.
But what he was learning about the body,
I don’t know.
—from Angela Voras-Hills’ Louder Birds (Pleiades Press, 2020)
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