May 18, 2017
Who said the month of poems had to be written within one calendar month? As April went on, and the world became new, life happened, and so it continues, new from day to day, PTL. So this year's Poohcetera's NaPoWriMo will continue as it happens, throughout the spring, whenever time and thought conspire!
Today's challenge is to write " a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. (The) nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form!"
Ironically, I start this page in the middle of the night, or, (is this?) more accurate(ly) in the wee hours of the morning.
Sounds in the Night
or, Writing the Wee Hours Away
Keys clack under bent fingers.
Tinnitus, tiny mimicry of sound
fills the ears' small channels.
I sniff. A footstep. Mine. Clack, clack.
A click--my back. Shift posture, stretch.
Black computer tower hums.
Rain rushes, smattering my window,
splattering sidewalk, deck, the drive.
Thoughts jostle in the mind,
rush to places I would go,
places where I must,
routes I then must take
when it is day. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Is it possible, I ask,
to hear my thoughts?
Sleep, sleep, til it is day.
Ho hum, a hum, furnace, frig
or air conditioner.
Sounds combine as one,
become irrelevant when, finally,
bedsheets and softer blanket,
jostle, rustle near my ear,
sleep, sleep til it is day, they say.
And I obey.
----Shirley Smith Franklin
Who said the month of poems had to be written within one calendar month? As April went on, and the world became new, life happened, and so it continues, new from day to day, PTL. So this year's Poohcetera's NaPoWriMo will continue as it happens, throughout the spring, whenever time and thought conspire!
Today's challenge is to write " a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. (The) nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form!"
Ironically, I start this page in the middle of the night, or, (is this?) more accurate(ly) in the wee hours of the morning.
Sounds in the Night
or, Writing the Wee Hours Away
Keys clack under bent fingers.
Tinnitus, tiny mimicry of sound
fills the ears' small channels.
I sniff. A footstep. Mine. Clack, clack.
A click--my back. Shift posture, stretch.
Black computer tower hums.
Rain rushes, smattering my window,
splattering sidewalk, deck, the drive.
Thoughts jostle in the mind,
rush to places I would go,
places where I must,
routes I then must take
when it is day. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Is it possible, I ask,
to hear my thoughts?
Sleep, sleep, til it is day.
Ho hum, a hum, furnace, frig
or air conditioner.
Sounds combine as one,
become irrelevant when, finally,
bedsheets and softer blanket,
jostle, rustle near my ear,
sleep, sleep til it is day, they say.
And I obey.
----Shirley Smith Franklin
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