I don’t know the best way to end this challenge, but I felt like I wanted to somehow reprise the month.  So I took lines from every (I think) poem I’ve written this month and reworked them into a new poem for this final day.  It’s a process I enjoy doing, that I call ‘reduction’.  Sometimes I have done it with a section of prose I’m reading — picking phrases that I’m drawn to and them working those phrases into a poem.  It’s a little longer that the other poems, but holds well, I think some of the main themes.

Thanks so much for following along this month!

That same poem – simply transposed

Breathe in
trusting abundance.

Autism came in April – speechless kids
still try to talk: fingers dance with the wind,
silken palms extend to me, to them;
learn the language, madly rewind
the conversation, ‘…sweetie, can you change?’
Out of Sync Child have fun! hiker, biker,
dasher, splasher, flop here and there,
can’t catch my breath, then barely moving…

Falling into syncopated rhythms,
with every rise or bump in the road,
this is the journey through.

Sip sweet pulled espresso shots,
sit and breathe, reaffirming a long held hope
and a second cup with a good man;
This is a mercy – tarry awhile.

Falling into syncopated rhythms,
with every rise or bump in the road,
this is the journey through.

Bird watching – slow and slower
wings wide, lighting and locking eyes adoringly
with swallows swooping, finches chasing,
the sparrow, a loon-nar melody, hours
spent leisurely incubating another stanza.

And conscience cleansed, we are susceptible
to a little thrill seeking on a Sunday afternoon
but curiosity is kinder…

Falling into syncopated rhythms,
with every rise or bump in the road,
this is the journey through.

Blooms flail and fall, fiery pots of red,
through yellow, marigolds, tulips, and dandelions,
in the grasses where dew beads on stems
all tangled – my heart, at its heart
is the greens behind the flowers
in a round about, turn and walk about
kind of way, comforted not by miracles
but by The Mercy – Open Hands keeping time,
regulating syncopated rhythms.

This is the journey though.
Breathe out.

© 2016 – Laurel Archer

I spent a contented hour re-reading the poems written throughout April, this morning.  For a few I declared, ‘I like that!’ and a for a few I scrolled on without much feeling.  Writing a poem every day does not mean a good poem will be written nor do I think that’s the goal of writing a poem a day.  For me, it was simply about writing everyday.  Could I do it; would I do it? I guess I proved I could although there were three holes in the schedule. What did I learn?

• the revision process is shortened in order to have a product.  I enjoy the process of revision so it was sometimes hard to post something that still felt rough.
• completion is motivating.  Somehow, even in its roughness, it still feels good to bring an idea to an end point.  It frees you to begin something else.
• structure, that is, a poetic form with rules is great for deadlines bringing your creative process to focus in specific ways: rhyme scheme, line length, format.  So although free form poems sound freer, that is not always the case.
• writing with others is so helpful for me.  My writing friend Violet, wrote everyday too and knowing she was there, steady and faithful, helped me to be faithful too.  This also includes you the readers — a poem is said to be incomplete until it is heard.  My poetry was more complete because you read it.  Thank you again.