In the month of May, author Kaitlin Curtice hosted a poetry challenge on her blog, asking readers to write a poem a day based on a prompt word. Here are the last of the poems that deserved to be repeated. Thanks for coming along on this poetry journey with me!
May poem day 29: Earth
I love that
the word for
our planet
and its skin
(its infinitesimal layer of skin)
is the same.
I love that
I can plunge
my hands into
crumbling dirt
and say, “This is earth,
This is Earth.”
May poem day 30: Death
The alien figurines
and Flying Nun comic books
The Sarge the Singing Hamster toy
and the piles of VHS tapes
The empty basement
and empty bookshelves
A garage packed with giveaways
and an overflowing dumpster
—The aftermath of death feels so
mundane.
May poem day 31: Now
“Stop living in the future
and the past,” my therapist tells me,
but how can I possibly follow these instructions?
How is it possible to go through life
as if the moment is all that exists,
without the layers of anticipated nostalgia?
The moment’s pain and sunburn
turns into memories on the beach.
The sweat and the swearing up the mountainside
turns into “remember when we hiked up that 4,000-foot mountain
in the 97-degree heat?
Good times!”
we say, and mean it,
though we did not mean it in the moment—
the future transforms the present,
a miraculous alchemy
that gets me through the hard days,
that reminds me that no matter how horrible the moment is,
a year from now,
it will be a year from now.
Things may not be better,
but they will be different:
The blessed march of time has
never failed me yet.
This moment holds the present and the future.
It holds what it is and it holds the stories we’ll weave.
I live in “the already and the not yet,”
listening to birdsong
and not trying very hard to simply exist—
my storytelling runs too deep.
I am here now. I am here later. I am here both times,
present and future,
in conversation with myself.
“Good times,” I say,
“Good times.”
~~~
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