PAD Day 30: So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiederseh'n, Goodbye

Wow, I can’t believe another National Poetry Month is over, and so is the poem-a-day challenge. I didn’t write quite as many poems as I usually do in April (counting today, thirty-two) but at least I was conscientious and got at least one out every day. They included a sestina, a villanelle, a terza rima, a lune series, a nursery rhyme, an elegy, a “charm” poem, an Anacreonic poem, a “New York School” poem, and two forms I hadn’t tried before, the curtal sonnet and the rubaiyat. Now I have to wait to see if one of my poems is selected for the Poetic Asides collection – each of Robert’s daily guest judges will select one poem from each day for the anthology. I tried not to worry too much about this, and just offered what I could muster up each day – maybe some of these are worthy of consideration, but I realize that most probably will not be serious contenders. There were many good poets participating there this month.

In the past, Robert has selected a list of what he considered the 25 or 50 best poems of the month – I usually made the cut (until last year) and one year I made it to #2. This list was based on participant’s submitting what they thought were their best five poems of the month. Since it doesn’t look like he will be doing that this year, I thought I’d offer my own list of the five poems I think were my best in April. If you haven’t read them, you can review the blog and consider them highlights, I suppose.

1. The Weird Family’s Kid (Day 13)
2. Aquaphobia (Day 26)
3. Changeable Sky (Day 17)
4. Shelter (Day 9)
5. Romantics (Day 15)

Okay, time for my final poem of the month. Today’s dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo are very similar: (1) Write a “calling it a day” poem, and (2) write a “farewell” poem. I guess this could run the gamut from “see you tomorrow” to “goodbye forever”. But I thought I’d go out with a flourish and add two additional challenges for today. I will write a “hay(na)ku” which was suggested earlier in the month by Vince Gotera, who is both a NaPoWriMo participant and a guest judge at Poetic Asides. Hay(na)ku is an invented form which is haiku-like but with much simpler structure: 1st line= 1 word, 2nd line = 2 words, 3rd line = 3 words. Also, since I didn’t use the Day 1 prompt from NaPoWriMo, I will use it today: Select a random quote from the website Bibliomancy Oracle and write a poem inspired by it. My epigraph is the quote I got.


Departing

a squirrels’ dart
wakens
the gravel path
-Lidija Šimkutė

this
loud goodbye
stirring up stones

draws
my attention
toward the path

straight
gravel-paved
to the horizon

when
I leave
I’ll make noise

you’ll
remember me
from the ruckus

you
can follow
the crunchy road

or
stay there
wishing my return

but
don’t expect
my dark silhouette

rising
back over
the shouting hills