The NaPoWriMo, Day 14 task is to write a poem of at least ten lines in which each line begins with the same word: an anaphora.
When You Know
You know when you’ve had enough
When hopes and dreams are done and gone,
When your dog might outlive you,
When you can’t pass a bathroom,
When your hair is a memory,
When all your friends seem new,
When you wonder if you still can,
When someone says you’re harmless and they’re right,
When pain, not darkness, is your old friend,
When all your plans have come and gone,
When regrets and memories are the same
— if you have either at all,
When walking is workout,
When a game of pool is high impact for you,
When your favorite song is sung and gone,
When cooking and cleaning
— are aerobic exercises,
When grumpy, old, or sweet apply
— like names to all the people you meet,
When “I don’t care” answers every question.
Some of us have more past than future, but we look both ways.
Mind the gaps, ignore the aches.
I expect to surpass 37,000 words today. That keeps me on track to finish up 50,000 one week from tomorrow, on November 30th.
I thought the project I chose was going to be easy. Answering 127 questions about my past and myself has taken more time than I expected. I laughed at questions about my favorite hairdo and making a dinner party menu. Yes, I did that, but we called them haircuts (like crewcut) not hairdos, even though they were.
Memories are not forever. Sometimes there’s not much to say. Often, I must ask questions. Like yesterday, I had to ask Yolonda the name of the drive-in burger place where we met. She sent me an article about it closing in the 1970s.
Research can be fun, but to write enough words each day, I must answer four or five questions with four to five hundred words each. And each question is different and unpredictable.
As I enter my fourth week of this self-inflicted Nano challenge, I feel like I will not do it again. It’s a lot. However, I’ve managed to keep up with everything else.
In addition to writing for Nano, I’ve posted at least two poems and one essay each week. On the 8th, I accepted a challenge to write a short prose piece on dVerse, a poetry writing webpage. The problem there was making time to read and respond to 40-plus other bloggers.
I’ve also written three micro-fiction stories for the Friday Fictioneers challenge (30-ish to read and respond to), with one more to do before Nano ends next week.
The weekend of November 5th through the 7th, we drove to west Texas to visit with Julie and her bunch for grandson’s last football game of the season and his 16th birthday.
(Christian Ashby #74, Colorado City, TX Wolves.) When you find yourself the varsity center and defensive nose-guard on your high school football team as a sophomore.
I’ve also managed to complete several home honey-do and self-assigned projects. I’ve been shopping several times and there is more to do this week in preparation for our family’s Thanksgiving on Saturday.
Except for three or four days, I exercised every day by walking or swimming. I’ve been reading as much as I can (finally completed Papa Hemingway) and trying to figure out what to read next.
I tried doing my Saturday morning writers group zoom meetings. That hasn’t worked well. I’ve had to leave early on two occasions because I couldn’t concentrate (needed to be writing for Nano), and I’ve passed on two others. And now I’ve done this report.
Click for Sammi’s blog and links to other blogs for prose and poems.
Timeless Reflections
For twenty-seven thousand days and nights
what you have seen is not all that ever was.
You see in me today’s truth, one perpetual now.
With one look I never judged anyone.
I reflected an eternal present
without darkness, forgiving the past,
each glimmer gone, days and nights
numbered and stacked
upon your tired shoulders.
Like ashes from wood burned
in past fires, days forgotten, names confused,
adjusted appearances, time
carefully dealt from fate’s shuffled deck,
one at a time until there was none.
Lines of life get clearer, youth
forgotten there, inside grandfather’s mirror.
Mirrors can’t look both ways.
The reflection they cast is only today.
Mind the gaps and fix the cracks, everyone has history.
This mirror hung in my grandfather’s house 100 years ago, then in our dining room from before the day I was born. Click on the photo to read Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Mirror.”
Like old, faded white, torn, photographs
faces with names I forget, family
I never met. Dead people still
physically and mentally part me.
Memories. Pulpy puzzles without pieces.
Forgotten years of backyard child’s play
where I fell for the girl next door,
Tootie, older than I at three or five,
my first fetish. Desires I never
understood or confessed till now.
Grass, dirt, fences, porches,
clothes drying, neighbors.
My first snowman.
I remember her name,
how I felt, nothing else.
No Tootie photo.
Look both ways.
The past equals no future.
Mind the gaps and fill them with memories of whom.
It says,
“Sambo.Richards, Duck Pond, PA”
(northeast of Scranton)
on a keepsake;
a dog tag probably,
all the d’s are backwards.
It was my mother’s,
and I have others. Some
were my grandfather’s
who was quite the handyman.
I never knew Sambo,
nor my grandfather.
But I knew Mom.
Looking both ways,
keepsakes are memories,
sometimes not our own.
Mind the gaps. History is there.
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