Napo 23

I got behind again. I don't think I'll make the 30/30 goal this year, but maybe that's ok. Here's one I wrote today, a sort of ars poetica. I usually HATE ars poeticas, but the prompt was to try one, and the purpose of 30/30 for me is to really try new things.

To My Students

Your poems may not always sing

like a mockingbird’s crepuscular serenade.

They may not always trill with the wind

In spring, tinged with love and lust

and magnolia blossoms opening

their wide eyes to the world.

They may not always sit on a wooden fence

On another peaceful southern morning

Calling out to other mockingbirds

With beauty. Always beauty.

And that’s ok. Some songs

have a greater purpose than melody.

Come dusk, today, a chick

Must be nestled in the branches of an oak

In my backyard. The song its parents sing

isn’t beautiful—it’s a war cry,

a warning to the waiting cat below,

that they, like a poem, can dive-bomb

down from the sky, beak pursed,

ready to hit the powerful, the huge,

the insurmountable hunger of the world

straight in the heart.

The birds sing, then for the future—

a song that hurts the ears to hear,

that reminds me, the listener,

of the violent dance of our world,

predator and prey, powerful and powerless,

the tiny chick, the tiny chance it will survive

in this neighborhood filled with mouths

and teeth and throats. But on the heels

of their tender song comes the chance

that maybe, maybe, maybe

the chick will live to trill a song

all her own someday.

May your poems,

Sometimes,

Sing like this.