DOODLE FLOWERS

Some days you're the pigeon; some days you're the statue. Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you. (And no, I haven't seen The Revenant yet.) That's kind of how my April is going, in terms of managing a poem a day. Yesterday, almost nothing. Today, well, at least I've made a start.

Today's poem responds to two prompts. Robert Lee Brewer, in Poetic Asides http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2016-april-pad-challenge-day-8, suggests we "write a doodle poem," while Maureen Thorson of NaPoWriMo http://www.napowrimo.net/ reminds us that "Poets have been writing about flowers since, oh, the dawn of time," and challenges us to do the same.

FLORA

I've doodled the same little blossoms for years,
five petals, all one looping motion,
like the sharp five-pointed stars
we learned to draw in grade school,
but rounded, soft, each petal ready
to flutter away alone on any friendly breeze.

They occupy corners of shopping lists,
line up across the bottom of class notes,
drift down the margins in delicate clusters
tied together with ribbons of ink.

Sometimes they anchor simple landscapes,
grow out of mounds of spiky grass
along meandering paths up little hills
to mushroom-shaped cottages
with tilted, smoking chimneys and always,
always the same round window over the door,
homes for plump fairy grandmothers
with full cookie jars and mugs of milky tea,
waiting just for me.

APRIL IS THE POETRY MONTH

It's here again, National Poetry Month, along with one of my favorite daily practices, the "poem-a-day-for April." There are some good websites out there offering daily prompts if you need inspiration; two I like are Robert Lee Brewer's "Poetic Asides" blog,  http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides, and NaPoWriMo,  http://www.napowrimo.net/, but I'm sure a google search would turn up others.

To be honest, I haven't gotten off to a roaring start this April, producing rough drafts at best and nothing at all yesterday, though I'm a bit happier with this morning's effort, responding to NaPoWriMo's prompt to write a food poem. I'm not ready to call it a finished product, but I've decided to share it anyway, and I'd be very interested in any comments you might care to make. Interpretations? Observations? Anything?

Last night I dreamed about meringue.

Not delicate little cookies, not billowy

oversweetened clouds atop a

lemon pie. No, this meringue filled

a big Rubbermaid storage bin,

and the more I scooped into a

normal-sized bowl, the more what was left

swelled, threatening to overflow

its blue plastic boundaries.

I couldn’t keep up. There was no

time to stir in the vanilla, no time

to taste, to see if it needed more sugar.

How many egg whites were in it?

Some number beyond my comprehension.

On the counter a pan of little tarts

awaited their topping.

They didn’t need much. Two eggs’ worth, tops.

So where did it come from, all this stuff?

And why did it keep growing?

I knew if I stopped scooping

it would inflate, expand, balloon

over the sides, onto the floor,

filling the kitchen, then the house,

then squeeze out through the cracks around

the doors and windows, up the chimney,

down the drains, cover the yard and

flow out into the street, condemning

everything and everyone in its path

to sugary suffocation.