Now back to some regular poeting…

The November 29th prompt in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano, is to ‘[w]rite a poem that begins with the next thing anyone says to you.’ If nobody else is around, it suggests calling somebody up, or turning on the TV or radio, and using the first thing you hear. Of course, with my luck, the first thing I encountered was a commercial that opened with somebody asking ‘What’s up?’ Meh. I kept watching, in case the program to follow, The Dick Van Dyke Show, offered something better. The episode opened with Mary Tyler Moore asking ‘What’s this?’ Okay, okay…

What’s this?

Saturday morning jazz
cool and crisp as the autumn air
after the first snowfall

The washing machine
chugs along in the other room
dancing to its own rhythm

The sleeping cat
curled up on the warm blanket
looks up for a moment

The solitary poet
sits on the sofa with pen in hand
writing it all down

(29 November 2014)