Tag Archives: National Poetry Writing Month

A Pause in the Poems, Sorry!

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I’m scheduled for surgery Thursday morning, (that’s tomorrow!) and that has required a few unexpected appointments to make sure everything is a go. As far as I know, I will have local anaesthetic, and a sedative to keep me calm, but not asleep. Anyway, that is what I am hoping for!

They will take a vein in my arm and join it to the artery to make what I guess you might call a “supervein.” My term, not theirs! They call it an A-V fistula. I’m a bit nervous, to say the least, but it’s something I need to do.

But if you’ve followed me in previous NaPoWriMo’s (is that a word?) you know that sometimes I can write three poems in a day. I think one year, quite awhile ago, I was so far behind I wrote 15. Were they good poems? Ha. Maybe. Maybe not so much.

All this to say, the rest of the poems are coming, as long as my typing muscles co-operate. It may take a bit to convince them to do that.

NaPoWriMo 2022 30 Poems in 30 Days

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In response to the early-bird prompt March 31st on NaPoWriMo.net

One Day to Go and an Early-Bird Prompt  On March 31, 2022

The prompt suggests using lines from Emily Dickinson as inspiration. I chose the line:

“Forever might be short”. Here’s the poem (first draft at least)

On a Flickering Screen

Forever might be short – Emily Dickinson

The small screen flickers, distorts images of houses,
hospitals, playgrounds, schools. Perhaps last week
each stood in its stone beauty, stood firm against the wind,
bastions of life in an ordinary city. Built to last forever.

Forever might be shorter than we think. Overhead,
the drone of missiles, the wail of sirens, and in the square
a solitary cello player draws his bow across strings again and again.
In vain, he tries to drown out the sounds of war, the sounds

that will play again and again for days, for weeks, and every night
in everyone’s dreams. Here, a mother gathers up her children,
grasps small fingers in her hands, tugs them away from their toys.
You will have new ones, she promises, not knowing from where or how.

This small family group sets forth on foot into the forests, not knowing
how long ‘til their next meal, how far to safety, how many bullets
they will dodge on the way. Behind them, older sons and husbands,
forced to stay to fight a war they didn’t start, didn’t want.

Each face on these soldiers determined, each face strong in love of country.
All will fight for their homeland, for freedom, for their families, a safe place
to raise their children without fear, without bombs, without death lying
all around them, every town, every street, every corner.

Carol A. Stephen

April 1, 2022

NaPoWriMo 2018 Two Sylvias Press april 20, 2018

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Ah, to write about a secret and share it. Well, I can’t think of anything I am keeping secret that I can tell about, except perhaps one that I don’t know the answer to:

 

Family Secret

It isn’t my secret. It might be
my father’s. Perhaps his mother knew.
Born to one surname, married under another.
What happened in the years between?

Did it change when he was small?
Perhaps he never knew at all?
Am I a Swaebe? Or am I a Pfahl?

Did she change it or did he?
Why all the mystery?

All that so many years ago.
I suppose now I’ll never know.

Carol A. Stephen (nee Swaebe)
April 20, 2018

Swaebe is pronounced with a long a, silent e’s.  Swayb.

Pfahl, as far as I know, has a silent P and h  FAWL

NaPoWriMo 2018 Two Sylvias Press April 19, 2018

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In each line of a 10 line poem use two words that mean the opposite of each other. This one was tough, because of the limitation of line length and the constraint of 10 lines.  Not my best effort. Trying to catch up does not attract the best words onto the page!

Winding Down

Days I think I’m crazy, the only thing that keeps me sane
is playing crazy eights, the start, stop and start again play
as each takes turns winning everything or nothing,
bitter losses, sweet rewards.

Wide awake when I start, sometimes I nod off, asleep sitting upright,
the outer me with closed eyes, while the inner me still plots strategy.
When I go to bed on ice cold sheets, I fire up the mattress heater,
look to the clear sky for stars, or check a red-cloudy sky for snow.
Near the river, I hear the geese, far off an owl hoots once then silent.
Nature sleeps in deep shadow in the park, near the shallow end of the pond.

Carol A. Stephen
April 19, 2018