PAD Challenge Day 30: Finish Line!

Whew! Once again, I made it through the Poem-a-Day Challenge for April, and I’m pretty happy in general with the results. Combining two prompts for daily inspiration made them a little less generic and more thought-provoking. Thanks again to Robert Brewer at Poetic Asides and Maureen Thorson at NaPoWriMo for spurring me on through the last thirty days. Thanks also to everyone who commented on my poetry here and elsewhere online – knowing that others are reading and enjoying it is encouraging too.

 I did a little analysis of my production this month: I wrote a total of 46 poems, all but six of which were inspired by the daily prompts. I wrote a total of 707 lines, an average of 23.5 a day. There was a lot of “formal” poetry in there, too: two sonnets, four limericks, two tanka, five hay(na)ku, a triolet, a villanelle, a ghazal, a clerihew, a double dactyl, a blues poem, and a “pan-ku” (my own invention), plus five other rhyming poems. Also among the 46 were a couple of parodies (of Gertrude Stein and W.H. Auden), a cento, an elegy, and a prose poem. No haiku, though, for some reason.

 Today’s final entry in the PAD challenge, from the Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo prompts: (1) Write a poem about fading away, and (2) write a poem that uses the phrase “I remember…” at least three times.Here’s my result:


 Fading


I remember the day I knew my grandmother’s
mind was going, when she poured hot coffee
over the tea bag in my cup.

I remember the day my uncle went out for milk, then
called his wife five hours later from two hundred miles away,
saying he didn’t know where he was.

I remember my father-in-law, dazed in his chair,
suddenly unable to tell me my name,
or his own, or what day it was.

I remember less these days too, little gaps
and tip-of-the-tongue moments more frequent:
where I put my glasses just a minute ago,

the name of a favorite actor,
whether I took my morning pills.
When we stop remembering, do we fade away?