April 2024
Bio Note: I am participating in the Stafford Challenge of writing a poem a day for one year. This month I've submitted poems I've written since the beginning of the challenge on January 17 to Verse-Virtual. The challenge has helped me focus on my writing, make good use of writing time and more skillfully look for prompts throughout the day. My goal with the challenge was to recover from a lagging sense of wonder and the journey is going well.
Light and Line
I reach for the stars from my prison
of hours—deadlines, schedules
mortar the stone walls, my hard-wired
refusal to change forges window bars.
Those stars I reach for remind me
of Van Gogh’s twirling, twisting sky—
murmuration of light and line
seen too from a prison—his fortified
with beams of gloom, self-doubt.
But he saw and he painted. And so
I look and I write, willing words
to weaken my window’s bars.
Illumination
Today I woke from a dream mid-sentence.
This is how we die, too—mid-breath, last
thought remaining incomplete and lucky
if our hand rests warm in the flesh
of one we love. Today I woke
to surprising brightness, thought
my husband had left the hall light
on, then saw it was long past dawn.
When we die, they say the light
we see can’t be mistaken.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL