NaPoWriMo -
eBook
APRIL 2020 NaPoWriMo Poetry eBook
Submissions for April 2020 are over.
Big Bend Community College NaPoWriMo 2020 by William C. Bonaudi Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://libguides.bigbend.edu.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://libguides.bigbend.edu.
NaPoWriMo: April 30 Poetry Prompt
FINAL PROMPT
Scott Woodham, English Instructor
"Choose one activity, habit, or state of mind that is either totally new or that you’re experiencing differently now during social distancing. Try to use it as a window into seeing how the world is unchanged even though your routine in experiencing it may be different. The world hasn’t changed at all even though human beings may be looking at it differently, or seeing a different part of ourselves or our environments than usual. I picked four-line grafs here, but feel free to choose whatever form you want."
Pandemic Walking News
Each morning families I’ve never
seen before but surely are
neighbors practice walking now and
soon they’ll master it well
enough, like all of us have mastered
living to lean on life’s bent-
up training wheels made of death saying
how valuable even the worst among us are.
I’m learning to walk again
as they are, all our pale legs
hang up stiff-kneed at unfamiliar
patches of sidewalk subtly peaked.
And now I know a neighbor’s jeep
has a fake hunting permit for people
we consider family--as if fantasy
ever needed registration to cause disaster.
We know his dogs now better than him, having
Walked past them so many times saying
what good boys they are that now they
whine soft hellos when we pass and sniff
through the fence instead of barking like
we’re trying to steal their deadly master’s
everything. Nothing is different though
everything’s changed. No one comes
back from the dead though all
we can do is get closer. The blooming
Bradford pear tree at sunset so full
of feeding bees became electric and could
have followed the cranes up and away.
The smell of manure each morning says
creation hasn’t stopped destroying itself on
schedule for even more harvest.
-- Scott Woodham, 2020