Happy June, everyone! I'm saving the new stuff for another day. I've got plans man... In the meantime, from now until Tuesday (or thereabouts) you are invited to post your poems about Fathers. Your poem or a poem by a famous/published/well-known poet. Our only caveat this time around is the subject: dad. Your dad, someone else's dad. Grandpa, great-grandpa. You as a father. (ooohh...great writing prompt for women, write about yourself as if you were a father...)
Stop by next Thursday and post the links to your newly created patchwork poems.
As always, though I am, at heart, a rebel, there are a few "rules" we abide by here at patchwork poetry:
* We use only FULL LINES of other people's poetry in the creation of patchwork poems. Phrases and favorite words don't count (at least not around these parts).
* We DO change a tense or a participle here and there. Add an S, remove an -ED, minor stuff like that. The patchwork purist takes lines JUST AS THEY ARE. That is the challenge! That's why we're here. (Or, at least, that's why I started this thing...)
* We ALWAYS, ALWAYS credit our muses!
Thanks for poeming with me!
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10 comments:
i think i'm jumping back in ... here's one:
Father's Song
by Gregory Orr
Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.
Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child's blood so red
it stops a father's heart.
My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.
Round and round: bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tried to teach me risk.
another:
My Father's Hat
by Mark Irwin
Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
was that of a clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I'm not sure is there.
Whose Mouth Do I Speak With
by Suzanne Rancourt
I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we'd gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we'd smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that's all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?
last one from me. what did everyone else find?
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
These are wonderful! I love the "blue black hands".
Here is a great link to a discussion and even more links about father poems: Poets org
And here is my offering for our patchwork circle: Dance Russe by William Carlos Williams
witchy, do the poems you chose appear here, lines intact?
yes, these are intact. i pasted them from poets.org and i'm realizing now i should have just done the links. forgot. (if you want to delete them and use links i don't mind)
but yes, these are in tact.
and i love that poem you added. i read it often.
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