This month Linda Mitchell posed our Inklings challenge. She had us randomly exchange poems amongst our group and invited us to respond in some way or other to that poem, saying we could “fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem…”

Margaret Simon sent me her poignant poem, “Porch Lights.”

Porch Lights

after Susan Aizenberg

Porches hear their call–
Carolina wrens
Toot-tweet, toot-tweet, toot-tweet

I am practicing
being in the moment

attend only to sound,
this mating echo
before dawn

but a memory comes
of a wren on the back porch

nesting in a flower pot
left behind when we moved Mom

to memory care–
I see a photo of her
on my phone,

smiling as she always has.
She still follows directions.

The doll she holds
needs her more than I do,

now nestled in her arms
where I once lay.             

My sorrow 
draws me to
listen, hear

the wrens joined 
by a chorus
of bus wheels

rushing down my street
as the day begins.

©Margaret Simon

This poem is steeped with love, loss and longing. I considered many responses to it, and found a wonderful one in Charles Wright’s “Sitting at Night on the Front Porch.” Unfortunately, I didn’t write that poem, so I was still at the drawing board. I thought about responding to the grief of losing one’s mother, to the wrens in the discarded nest, to the porch in the title.

I was especially drawn to the porches, though that felt like a light direction to take from this weighty poem. Still, I’m fascinated by them, and by how society has changed since the invention of AC (among other things) took people off their porches and into their homes. I did a little googling and discovered there’s actually a Professional Porch Sitters Union, and they even have a motto: “*Sit down a spell. That can wait.” Oh! I can really get behind that!

In the end, I fiddled around with all sorts of entry points and forms, including triolets, found poems, golden shovels, free verse, haiku and acrostic responses. I’m sharing two of these poems, wishing I’d had a bit more time to work with a triolet that seemed to be coming together.

In the sorrow of a forgotten flower pot, a wren builds its nest

Life is like that
full of paradoxes,
the cloak of our sadness
woven with intermittent
glinting threads of gold
as bright as the echo
of a wren’s call

©Molly Hogan, draft

Sit Down a Spell*

Porches invite you in
Offer respite from blazing heat, incessant rain or the
Rub of daily life. They create a space for
Companionship–a liminal place where
Heartache and joy intertwine,
Embedded within stories and silence…
Sometimes a porch is like a poem

© Molly Hogan, draft

If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:

Catherine Flynn
Mary Lee Hahn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

The Poetry Friday Roundup this week is hosted by Buffy Silverman. Her post comes with a trigger warning for those who are snake-phobic. Check it out here!

In vino veritas

My relationship to poetry
is much like mine to wine
I don’t know the terminology
but I know what I like
what flows into me
with soft notes of currant
or spicy pepper
subtle pleasures that
have me sipping more
and slipping into giddy

Once someone talked to me
about the poetic use of anaphora
and I momentarily pictured 
elegant Greek vases
crusted in time
holders of sweet, secret ambrosia…

Was I so wrong?

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link.

A month or two ago, I made a deliberate change to my morning routine. While enjoying my regular bowl of cereal and my last few moments at home before heading to school, I stopped looking at my phone and playing word games. Instead, I chose to use that time to read. I didn’t want to continue reading my “bedtime” book in the morning, but instead wanted to dip into books that lent themselves to short spans of reading.

The first book I read this way was “Do Interesting-Notice. Collect. Share.” by Russell Davies. It’s full of short chapters and all sorts of rich thoughts about creativity. “Interesting isn’t a personality, it’s a decision. Don’t hunt for diamonds. Get fascinated by pebbles.” It was delightful to nibble at a few chapters each morning.

Now I’ve moved on to read “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison. It’s comprised of short poems written back and forth between those two men. It’s a joy to read as they explore friendship, nature, aging, and more. Their poems are insightful, irreverent, humorous, poignant and wise. I love that none of the poems are attributed so you can just lose yourself in the flow of their exchange. Here are a few of my favorites:

All I want to be
is a thousand blackbirds 
bursting from a tree, 
seeding the sky.

-------------

At the tip of memory's 
great funnel-cloud 
is the nib of a pen.

--------------

The moon put her hand
over my mouth and told me
to shut up and watch. 

--------------

What if everyone you've loved
were still alive? 
That's the province 
of the young, who don't know it. 

--------------

The hay in the loft
misses the night sky,
so the old roof
leaks a few stars.


It was so hard to stop sharing favorites! What a treasure of a book! My copy is fluttering with so many sticky notes marking different poems, that I'm pretty sure if a breeze came through, it could take flight. Or maybe it already has.

I'd love to know if you have any books that might fit well with my new morning routine. Any suggestions?

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tracey Kiff-Judson at her blog. If you’re a Monopoly fan, you definitely need to stop by and check out her post!

This month it was Heidi’s turn to pose the challenge for our writing group. Not one to do things by half, she created an elaborate, arrive-in-the-actual-mail, beautiful “12 Days of Yuletide Poetry Prompts”. Wow! She wrote: “My gift to you: a collection of 12 poetry prompts based on the words of my family’s Yuletide tradition. Starting on Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice, we light an additional candle each day which celebrates a “gift of the human spirit.” Pick one that appeals and address it however you like!”

Each day it was like a little gift awaited me, and I had great fun responding to the prompts in my notebook. Today I’m sharing my response to the first prompt for December 21st which was: “Call back the dying sun using 3 repetitions.” I imagined a lofty tone and a lovely, lyrical response. I even started writing that way in my notebook:

Oh, golden orb
    whose fading has left fields to fallow
    and set green to yield to white
    return, we beseech you!

But somehow things went in a different direction.

Beseeching The Sun on the Solstice

Each morning it rises
within me
a dark shadow to match
the dismal grey that’s saturated the sky
in a ceaseless array of somber tones
for seemingly weeks now.

The mounting dread and dismay
at day
after day
after day
with no sun,
no light, 
no warmth.

It’s the darkest day now
and it feels like there’s not a ray of hope
If the damn sun
doesn’t come out soon
I’m going to dissolve
into a million glum, sodden clumps
of sorrow and gloom
and rain down on everyone around me
just like the unrelenting drizzle
that’s been permeating the ground
leaving soggy trails of muck that suck
at my feet and bog me
down
down
down
until I whimper and whine
and retreat
to stare out the windows
into the abyss

There’s nothing benign about this relentless, 
repressive squash-your-spirits
grey, grey, grey

Sun,
I’m begging you
I’m pleading
I’m down on my knees
Come back!
Come back!
Come back!

©Molly Hogan

As you may surmise, December yielded day after day of no sun in my neck of the woods. No snow either. Just grey drizzle and chill. This is not typical, and let’s just say, I did not weather it with grace. I vacillated between wanting to rant and rave and feeling absolutely depleted and depressed. Writing about it helped a little. Having prompts to ponder everyday was another bright spot. (Thanks, Heidi!)

If you want to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:
Heidi
Mary Lee
Catherine
Linda
Margaret

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Marcie Flinchum Atkins today.