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napowrimo challenge – 30 poems, starting now

this morning sheila stowell posted about napowrimo on the facebook. i had never heard of it before – a month long challenge to write thirty poems in thirty days. they provide prompts or you can self-prompt.

glorious.

this blog began a long long time ago with a personal challenge to write 300 words i felt comfortable publishing each day, and has been a solace and growth space for me for over ten years. i am going to do napowrimo and it feels right to publish as much as i can of the poems here. i will still probably publish other stuff too, but this feels right on time.

prompt:

the eagle doesn’t cry. he is too fixed
on majesty to feel bad about gravity’s load.

(from macho man’s last elbow drop, w. todd kaneko)

poem 1:

find a dropped feather
place it on your altar
but i am not more sacred
not more clean, more perfect
just the part of you that has to fly

i take my meditation
on the up draft, in the patterns
small & fierce & naked
in all motion unprotected
i cast my shadow down & watch it grow

drop the found feather
hidden in your prayers
don’t say my name to god
she’ll laugh in mirrors
push you from ledges

i gasp up the wind
its all of the same miracle!
& this knot of pounding wonder
must offer over & again over
to love even the darkness without weeping