NaPoWriMo 16/30

Wow. Just over halfway through the month and I have to say I am so happy I decided to participate in this years NaPoWriMo Challenge. The prompt for today is to write a poem inspired by a picture. 

A Sexy Old Photo of My Grandma Clara

When I knew her
She was old, 
Wrinkled and liver spotted with 
Strict, short curls that had always been gray.
And yet there she is, 
Barefoot glamor girl in a bikini, 
Shiny waves of auburn hair,
A defiant smile and open stance
Arms behind her, welcoming the world, 
So young and on the verge, 
Pulsating with the very freshness I thought I'd invented,   
Head tossed back just so 
Laughing with the trees themselves 
As though they shared a certain knowing, 
Wind blowing through the tall crests of irises she planted, 
Her young pink toes curl firmly around the wet grass
The pale glimpse of her slender thigh
Surprises me every time. 

NaPoWriMo 8/30

Possibilities

The house was empty all weekend

My girls are grow, growing, almost grown,

(I feel so alone. Its scary.)

They're all legs and breasts now, perfumed and mascara-ed

And fashionable with cell phones and mall

Dates and making their own money.

They think they don't need me anymore and

After years of diapers, scrapes and snotty noses

Monumental firsts of words, and steps, and school 

(I forgot who I am. Its disconcerting.)

After years of being needed
I'm faced with an identity crisis.

Entering a state of flux, a transitioning

(I can be anything. Its okay)
My I is being redefined.

NaPoWriMo 6/30

Today's prompt is to write an animal poem. Being the Oregonian that I am, I decided to write on coho salmon. Consider this another work in progress! Oh, and the pictures here are all mine (all the pictures I post with the exception of my Outfits of the Week, are my own).


Oncorhynchus kisutch--Coho Salmon

Slick and silver
Time traveler, oceanic wanderer
The smell of your freshwater birthplace is calling you home.

Journey weary, hook-beaked warriors 
Build redds in the riffles 
Spawn on gravelly beds of ripples and current
And die.

Coho and Chinook Fry from Knowles Creek, Siuslaw Watershed

Salmon Smolt, Knowles Creek, Siuslaw Watershed

Spawned out salmon carcasses contribute nitrogen and other nutrients to forest-stream ecosystem

  I had the wonderful opportunity to work two seasons monitoring native fish species in a mid-coastal creek in Oregon where I developed a love of these sacred animals, which were a main source of food and currency for the  indigenous people of the area. Coho are anadromous, and spend part of their life in freshwater and part of their life in salt water. On average, coho spend 1-2 years in the stream of their birth, covered with speckles and parr marks that provides camouflage from predators, helping them hide among the stream detritus. As smolt, they "silver up" before heading out to sea, where being silver protects them from predation in the open ocean. Coho will spend one to three years at sea before they are driven to return home to their natal stream to spawn and die. Oncorhynchus literally means hooked nose, and refers to the fact that spawning male coho develop formidable looking hooked jaws. 

And now, a video I took of a spawning run at Fish Creek in the Siuslaw Watershed, Oregon, November of 2009. 

NaPoWriMo 5/30

The prompt for today being the theme of "opening day" inspired in me a bit of wordplay. Coffee** is my favorite third world beverage, and one of my long time friends in battling the daily melancholia of my poetic disposition.

Why I Drink Coffee

I wish that I could

wake up bright eyed

grasp firmly the folds of the world and

open the day 

like I would slice open the most fragrant melon

and every little bit of everything inside

was perfect, delectable and predictable,

right down to the rind.

Opening the day,

dressed in sparkling salmon dew flesh

and dripping with all the honeyed goodness, but no.

I am more likely to open the day 

as though it were a stubborn child, 

who must be catered to,

coerced or cudgeled into cooperation

and a certain amount of tugging is required.

**Each coffee bush takes 5-7 years to become fruitful and an individual bush produces an average of a pound of dried beans per year. It boggles my mind to think of how many bushes are dedicated to my consumption alone. For this reason, I choose to support fair trade coffee companies with sustainable and ethical business practices--organic, shade grown, supportive of local indigenous communities, etc--such as Equator Coffees.

NaPoWriMo 4/30

The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write a poem based on a particular song. Tempting, but...I am feeling stubborn and uninspired, and, er, shucks, fine, I'll give it a twirl. 

Life's Blues

In the never ending search for the answer of all answers
the crux, apex, epitome, the "what-is-the-meaning" type epiphany, Life was just plain tuckered out, beat, spent, oh so tired and ready to throw her hat in. And who could really blame the gal? 

So she sang herself a blues ditty, went a little something like this:

I've been searching for the answers, but I'm so tired and tuckered out
yes I been searching for the answers, but I'm so tired and tuckered out,
There's just too many questions, makes a mean, mean ol' girl fuss and pout.


Well...that's all I've got...for now. 

 

NaPoWriMo 3/30

The prompt for today, the third day of NaPoWriMo, is to write a poem in celebration of the wedding, which turns out has its own special word, of course, that even my scientifically oriented mouth had difficulty pronouncing. For this reason alone, and not because I dislike marriage, I am going on my own today and will instead be writing about the first topic or headline I stumble upon, which incidentally turns out to be Darwin's Legacy. In reality this is the title of a series of free lectures from Stanford available on youtube, click on the above link if you are interested checking it out. 

A recently discovered symbiotic relationship and a wonderful example of coevolution; green algae cells provide oxygen to developing salamander embryo. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/algae-live-inside-developing-salamanders-cells-scientists-find

  
And now without further procrastination, I present...a poem:

Darwin's Legacy

Thirteen species of finches 
Fly around in my head
Their beaks, 
Their beaks torment me 
In my sleep they are pecking and pinching
Pulling and plucking seeds of various sizes
From my cracks and crevices, 
My eyes and fingers burn with their guano
And would you believe I have been living for the last year 
Off  of  seaweed, pre-digested in the gut of a pink iguana?


Oh, the tangled bank is thick
So rife with hierarchical complexity 
And Darwin sailed on the Beagle straight through it
Plowing onwards through the origin of species
A single common ancestor, gone explode
Broken apart like Pangea over evolutionary time
The scatterings of diversity
Arising.

NaPoWriMo 2/30

Today is my youngest daughter, Dahlia's, birthday. Eleven years ago today, just after midnight, she was born, narrowly missing an April Fool's birthday.

Additions of large wood into creeks  is a driving force behind the health and complexity of forest-stream ecosystems. 

Force

I am undergoing certain change
the force of your being 
has affected 
infected
resurrected 
my mass times my acceleration
I am a rolling stone
potential transformed
a goddamn kinetic masterpiece.

NaPoWriMo 1/30

Believe it or not I have always considered myself a poet. I began writing poetry in elementary school and won my first poetry contest in third grade. I studied poetry for fun (and as a welcome break from my rigorous biology/biochemistry courses) in college and was super excited to have had the chance to take classes from some wonderful contemporary poets during my time at University, including Garrett Hongo and John Witte. Well, needless to say, I have not been the most prolific poet the last several years, and that is why I was so excited when I read my friend Sky's blog post about NaPoWriMo. Inspired by Sky, I have decided to take on the NaPoWriMo Challenge too and write a poem a day for the entire month of April. It is an exercise for myself in overcoming auto-censura, a word I coined to describe the horrible self-censorship I put myself through lately when I try to write. 

Sparassis crispa vortex

 Carpe Deim

To seize the day, an hour, a word, a single atom 

Pinched between my plump baby fingers

Brought up to my rosebud lips to suckle the inner juices of life itself 

Whirling about in orbitals like every thing has a place and purpose. 

I want to seize the day, but it is too thorny to grasp

And brambles make me ramble and maybe I am too scared to ask.