Day 3 of daily writing: a poem out of season

My goal for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) will be to write daily: I will aim to write a blog post and also, for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to do at least 15 minutes of writing on my novel every day before 6:45 a.m. I might not get the blog piece posted with a photo until after the children are off to school, but I really do want to cap the blog writing to the morning.

So sometimes, like day 1 this year, and today, and the whole month last year, that blog post will be a poem, whatever comes into my head as I’m getting up the oomph to get out of bed in the dark or am waiting for the water to boil for my hot lemon drink to start the day.

Here is what I came up with this morning, after a rough, numbed Saturday at the end of a week home with sick family. Last year I tried to use only photos I’d taken that day or within a day or two of the post. I loved the impetus to think visually. Today, though, I went with what was in my head and in my photo archive. It was not nearly as cold today as it was in these photos (or in my heart when I composed these words!)

To register as human
one would expect
to feel a swallowed icicle
like a piercing
like a long bullet to the belly
through the throat
Its chill would radiate
and threaten to split
the body into multidirectional
and projectile pieces

But, at what seemed the last possible moment
the body would fold itself around the icicle
motherly, reminding the shrinking shard
that it was bigger
and stronger
and warmer
And gently, the icicle would relent
It would have no choice
but to lose itself
layer by layer

To not be human, then,
would be to exist as if
a spear of frozen water
were not lining the length
of your upper body
and to fail
to melt it

2013  NaBloPoMo archives

Day 1: A poem

Day 2: The desire to write

See also the archive of my 2012 poems