April experiment

It is National Poetry Month once again. I usually do not take part in poetry month writing challenges, but I thought this year I might try something out of my comfort zone.

My plan: post a poem draft a day for this month. I have never blogged daily before, and I have never tried to compose a poem a day as Luisa Igloria has been doing on the via negativa blog for, I think, more than three years!!

This concept–er, this practice–will be super-challenging for me and scary on several levels, mostly on the level of posting unrevised, often unfinished or awkward material publicly. But I have just about 3,000 followers and only a minuscule percentage of them read my blog regularly, so I have to think of this as reading to a small room.

I can deal with that. At least–I think I can.

We’ll have to see how the month goes. Meanwhile, welcome to my month-long experiment in immediacy.

Tom’s Green Field

In your landscape

light exists as waves, not particles

active, roiling

over the placid horizontal planes: sky, treeline,

cropland in wind.

For there must be currents of air, speedy thrill

storm can assume

chopping at clouds miles distant, changing hue

illuminating

the dense grove’s surface so it shines

and no rain’s fallen

and perhaps no rain will dampen the field today–

only luminescence

pigment trapped in layers of oil, bouncing

cobalt, cadmium

iron oxide through your swirling glaze

that gazed once

on energy in patterns, an hour’s moment, waving green.