Today's Napowrimo suggestion (have I been in error, heretofore calling it a 'challenge'?) is to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. Robert Frost writes famously about a wall. Not wanting to channel his words, though I admire so many of his poems because I too write (or try to write) in a conversational style of poetry,
I consider the walls in my life.
Are they walls, or simply roads not taken?
A theme of not quite making it?
Or an embarassing wealth of choices?
Is this the beginning of a poem? (Stay tuned, we will make something
My mother left, with her final instructions, of this theme yet.)
a poem about a rose and a wall. (We had it printed in the funeral leaflet.)
...something about not mourning a rose
formerly blooming next to a wall, because
"the rose still blooms beyond the wall."
My mother, ever with me, instructing,
encouraging, holding out possibility
beyond every wall, singing to me
ways to be
happy.
--Shirley Smith Franklin
Can a flower actually grow through a wall? I suppose, if it were a stone wall. Stone wall, now there's an image and an idiom. Hmm. These days we have concrete and granite...if walls were such, would they admit a rose? (At this point in writing, I go back to the foregoing sentences that hint of poetry and separate them as they appear, above, now. The italicized words are not part of the poem.)
I consider the walls in my life.
Are they walls, or simply roads not taken?
A theme of not quite making it?
Or an embarassing wealth of choices?
Is this the beginning of a poem? (Stay tuned, we will make something
My mother left, with her final instructions, of this theme yet.)
a poem about a rose and a wall. (We had it printed in the funeral leaflet.)
...something about not mourning a rose
formerly blooming next to a wall, because
"the rose still blooms beyond the wall."
My mother, ever with me, instructing,
encouraging, holding out possibility
beyond every wall, singing to me
ways to be
happy.
--Shirley Smith Franklin
Can a flower actually grow through a wall? I suppose, if it were a stone wall. Stone wall, now there's an image and an idiom. Hmm. These days we have concrete and granite...if walls were such, would they admit a rose? (At this point in writing, I go back to the foregoing sentences that hint of poetry and separate them as they appear, above, now. The italicized words are not part of the poem.)
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