The reason why I participate in NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo every year is that the prompts really challenge me out of my poetry comfort zone. It’s important to become assured in your voice, but sometimes you really just have to get the bit between your teeth, bite and…push! Today’s prompt was like that for me. It started out with an exercise that was simple enough. Find ten words and write down ten random rhymes for them using a rhyming website’s generator. I used a combination of random dips into headlines from the Guardian Review 21st March issue and some objects that were close by. Not all got into the poem. And there were several false starts before I laboured out what emerged.

This was the brief today from NaPoWriMo.net.:

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) asks you to make use of our resource for the day. First, make a list of ten words. You can generate this list however you’d like – pull a book  off the shelf and find ten words you like, name ten things you can see from where you’re sitting, etc. Now, for each word, use Rhymezone to identify two to four similar-sounding or rhyming words. For example, if my word is “salt,” my similar words might be “belt,” “silt,” “sailed,” and “sell-out.”

Once you’ve assembled your complete list, work on writing a poem using your new “word bank.” You don’t have to use every word, of course, but try to play as much with sound as possible, repeating  sounds and echoing back to others using your rhyming and similar words.

http://www.napowrimo.net/

Notes from #Staying Home
 
The electricity went out last night,
plunging us in candlelit mystery.
It came back again, cause for pondering
on how we define some felicity.
Our screens flicker pictures of misery
from New York City, Rome. We’re wondering
when it will come closer to home, history
landing on the doorstep. Our fear. No flight.
 
When will we again be able to wander?
Contemplate a life in the wild yonder?
How much longer can the end be in sight?
Will discarding erroneous beliefs
about Monsters make us any stronger?
Will we be overthrown by trickery?
When the Barrier Reef died, who felt grief?
What meaning arises from Emergency?
 
Meanwhile, we swap anecdotes on the phone.
Gratitude is a landline’s live ring tone,
where we each reach out from our comfort zones.
 
Copyright © Bee Smith, 2020. All rights reserved.

Yes, we have lost service of our landline for a couple days two weeks ago. We do live in an area where the mobile (cell) signal is at the whim of the fairies. Yes, the power went for a few hours last night. Which also means we lose internet. But I am so grateful for the engineers and technicians who are negotiating the scary outside world so those of us staying home can have creature comforts. We also have a young neighbour who is doing our grocery ‘gap’ filling runs for us. I am a really not a gifted sewer. I don’t have a sewing machine. But I hand sewed a slightly wonky face mask for him yesterday from scraps of craft fabric I have around the house. Better safer, than fashionista.

Today’s featured image is a Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash.