Poem-a-Day Challenge Day 2

My dual prompts for today from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo 2012: (a) write a poem based on the song that was #1 the week your were born, and (b) write a poem about a visitor. The #1 song the week of my birth was "How High the Moon" by Les Paul and Mary Ford. (Paul was also known as an innovator of the electric guitar and recording techniques.)


How High the Moon

“Somewhere there’s music,
How faint the tune…”
Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis,
as performed by Les Paul and Mary Ford

After I left you,
no one followed me home
but the moon, which now beams
full through my dark window
like a mocking visitor.

I want to play you
a song I wrote, and bounce it off
the surface of that haughty satellite,
reflecting waves to where you are.
It might ease the sting.

Thinking it’s worth a try,
I pull my Les Paul Gibson from its case,
plug in, pick and strum,
aiming toward the moon,
asking it to carry the tune.


I almost forgot about the other reason I maintain this blog: for personal updates and self-aggrandizement. So in that spirit:

I was very pleased to learn that my poetry will be appearing again in Robert Brewer's Poetic Asides column in an upcoming issue of Writer's Digest magazine (July/August, I think). I won a contest on his blog for my quatern entitled "Purple Heart".

On April 1, I attended the launch party for Volume 57 of US 1 Worksheets, an excellent poetry journal out of Princeton NJ. It's always a well-attended event with great poetry, camaraderie and goodies, and my poem from the journal, "Postcard to the Ex" was a big hit.

One more thing to cross off my bucket list: I went to see the Phillies in spring training in Florida during St. Patrick's Day weekend. My buddy Bill and I stayed at a hotel that is right on Tampa Bay (gorgeous view) and conveniently located about 15 minutes from the Phils' stadium in Clearwater. We saw three games (the Phillies won 2 of the 3) and had a swell time.