PAD Challenge Day 8

I got a very late start today because of our Easter celebration, but better later than never. Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo were (1) Write a poem about being rejected and (2) Take a walk outside and write about your observations. Since I didn't read the second prompt till this evening, it was a bit too late to act properly on it - the closest to a "walk" that I took today was an Easter-related activity around my yard. I also found it hard to reconcile the two prompts today, and the "rejection" reference I made is perfunctory at best. But here it is, for what it's worth:

Easter Morning

At first I’d rejected my wife’s idea

of an Easter egg hunt in our yard for the kids,

the youngest of whom is sixteen.

They’ll think it’s childish, I said.

But she prevailed, so here I am creeping

around my yard at ten a.m. trying to hide

three dozen plastic eggs with prizes inside,

and I discover that the hot pink and orange ones

are the hardest to camouflage. I carry a notebook

and mark the location of each egg,

because at my age it gets harder to remember

details without a list. It’s not such a bad day

to be out here, sunny with a cool breeze.

I plant a blue egg under the boxwood,

a green one inside the rain gutter spout.

I come across my neighbors in the side yard

under my blooming dogwood tree,

dressed to their Easter nines for a family photo.

I send my holiday wishes and make a joke about

my notebook, then continue on my secret mission.

Later, when our guests have arrived, my wife

sends them out to the yard – two teenagers

and four young adults, one in spiked heels –

to hunt for eggs. They have a ball. She was right

after all. As they chatter excitedly about their finds

and the goodies inside them, I look back

at my dogwood, and notice how much it’s grown.