the poet's calendar
a year of your making
a poem :: a calendar
the blue month
the longest month
the month of wind, of whispers
the cherry-blossom-snow month
the softening moon month
the month of firefly talk, of languages older than words
the hedge-thrumming month
the skinny-dip month
the month of fresh pages, of poems
the conjuring month
the brittle month
the month of safe-keeping, of song
a poet’s notebook
We used to count time in the size of the moon. The height of the corn. The birds that were either present or absent. Before ‘tick-tock’, before tolling bells, winter was an unknown number of sunrises and sunsets. I wonder what those days felt like to the people experiencing them- longer than they are now?
Time comes up in my poetry often, as I attempt to sort out it’s inherent indifference. What I am struck by are the old ways of time, the sort of which are buried in our bones, deep in our DNA. The slightest shift of light, of temperature, of the wind’s direction…
What those first flowers must have meant after so much cold. What trepidation the maples turning red must have invoked. The creeks rising and receding, the nuance of sun (or lack there-of). What must each minute change have felt like thousands of years ago?
I wrote the poem above based on a prompt offered by Liz Migliorelli in her Tending the Hearth class (which I am currently taking, which I am LOVING). How would your calendar poem read?
This is a beautiful poem and prompt, thank you x