“Write a poem that … describes different times in which you’ve heard the same band or piece of music across your lifetime.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-thirty-11/)

My music lingers, in
my mind, my memory, my ears.
My music maintains meaning
down through all these years.

Music’s meaning may change,
age reveals new aspects.
New music enters my life,
new ways for meanings to connect.

A favorite song then,
years later, what was I
thinking? A favorite song
now, maybe someday to defy

its own meaning, as life
changes, music changes,
meaning changes. This is
the glory of how music ranges

The full spectrum of
human being, how it speaks
of the complexity of our
selves, our nadirs and peaks.

My music lingers,
long and lovely, loud
then quiet, soft and strident,
joyous, mourning, unbowed.

“Write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-nine-11/)

I simply cannot picture you
folding laundry.
I hear your glorious voice
coming through cheap speakers
as I cook
and I cannot picture you
at a stove
stirring a pot
(Of course you stirred
oh, so many metaphorical
pots in your career!)
or setting a table
or just generally
tidying up.
Your voice, such a regular
part of my quotidian experience,
yet I cannot see you
doing anything so normal.
I’m sure you did–
you having been a real
person, living your life,
you weren’t on tour
or in the studio
every second of
every day. You must
surely have done all
the normal things
we normal people do.
I simply cannot picture you
doing them. I need your
voice to soar,
to not be tied to the
mundane of normal.
I need your soaring voice
to take me away
from all this.

“Write a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-eight-11/)

I wonder nowadays what music
I should play at my father’s
funeral. He’s still very much
alive, healthy and content,
but I wonder, nevertheless.
Morbid to mull over, and
I do my best not to dwell
on it. But still, I wonder.
My father grew up with the
origins of rock ‘n’ roll,
came into adulthood to
the Beatles, Beach Boys,
Simon and Garfunkel, Dylan.
But he was never a musician,
and though he loves his
music, he’s not someone
clearly defined by the music
he loves. My father once
told me: “I wish I could have
made something beautiful.”
I want to play something
beautiful for him, when
the time comes. I have time,
still, to make my decision.
We’ve reached an age, now,
when I worry – just a bit –
every time the phone rings
at unexpected times. I don’t
want that call to ever come.
The time will never be right.
There will never be enough
time. It will always be
too soon. The glory of music
is as much in the ending
as in the song itself:
Music makes endings sweet,
imbues meaning in
the ceasing of time.

“Write your own poem that describes a detail in a painting, and that begins … with a grand, declarative statement.” I used a sculpture, but it’s the same spirit. (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-seven-11/)

Never have I seen such monumental sorrow!
Never have I seen stone tremble in anguish!

The Roman Pietà composes a triangle,
From a hypotenuse of earthly rock,
Past the savior’s lolling body,
Drawing the eyes up toward heaven.

At the apex, Mary’s face, cast down in mourning,
overwhelmed by loss.
No mother should outlive her son.

The subtlety of veins in his hands and feet
Whisper immanent resurrection
and the promise of eternal life,
Render her anguish everlasting.

The humanity of this sculpture destroys me!
This is not a celebration of sacrifice.
This is a memorial to the grief of Mary,
a pietà in the truest sense:

Salvation at the cost of a mother’s eternal sorrow.

“Try your hand at a sonnet – or at least something ‘sonnet-shaped.'” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-six-11/)

Becambl starkle metpo kerplotnic,
Deoben sergalny nem pokalny,
Flerulglio swatzenti velnutic,
Tetragabant glepnidich feragny.

Flogtrebit nergozop declimos brooz,
Trombolismut destribux pyseglip;
Flompergutsymyn soglop nerficooz,
Flibbertegibbit! Vengatsorepip!

Vecnatsigen greplamplibsebensee
Prebanseant sertfectan glieren.
Prebanseteal fertactinentee,
Frectanol glipantsett sesascheerin.

(Pay attention! Lest we fail to mention,
All language is a human invention.)

“Write a poem that recounts an experience of your own in hearing live music.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-five-11/)

I have a friend who says
the best concert he ever saw
was late-career Miles Davis.

I have another friend who says
late-career Miles Davis was
the worst concert he ever saw.

How can both be true?
He was onstage for over two hours
and only played two notes.

“What a rip off!” says one friend.
“But those two notes were perfect!”
says the other.

I wish I could’ve seen him.
I wish I could know what
two perfect notes sound like.

“Write a poem that involves people making music together, and that references – with a lyric or line – a song or poem that is important to you.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-four-11/)

I sang,
but Carl Sandburg I ain’t.
You remember,
not just the moon,
the two of us
howling together,
tearing through the night,
windows down,
radio up,
not caring who we woke
as we sang,
our howling soaring songs
filling the world.

“Write your own poem that focuses on birdsong.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-three-11/)

There’s a phenomenon called
the Critical Flicker Frequency
defining how we see and hear,
how we experience the world.

Different animals have different
Critical Flicker Frequencies,
so different animals
experience the world differently.

It’s believed that birds hear
faster than we do, that they
can pack more music into one note
than we pack into a melody.

I listen to a whippoorwill
and wonder why it sings
the same thing (always the same)
with such insistent repetition.

But it doesn’t. Within each note,
entire symphonies my slow ears
will never be able to hear,
each repetition sung uniquely,

Full of detail and meaning,
abundant with variations
I will never know
and cannot access.

Some animal see colors
I literally cannot imagine,
some smell scents on scales
inaccessible to me.

Some can feel the world
with near-molecular resolution,
and some taste things
for which I have no receptors.

Each sensoria experiencing
a world unrecognizable to others.
There is so much
that I will never know.

Do I find this ignorance
wondrous or fearful?
Both, sometimes, depending,
and even my fear is a wonder.

“Write a poem about something you’ve done … that gave you a … kind of satisfaction.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-two-11/)

I always thought I’d grow up
to live a life of the mind.
My childhood body burdensome,
never as easily athletic
as my classmates, never able
the same ways I envied in them.
I dove into books: scifi, fantasy,
not so much for their escape
but as a gym for my mind:
to wrestle with complexity,
to grapple with how
the world could be different.
In third grade, I wrote an essay
on what I wanted to be when I grew up:
When I Grow Up, I Want to Be
a Cosmologist! (So proud to know
that word, even then I knew I was
too young for people to expect that!)
Laying awake in bed, thinking about
time, existence, beginnings and ends,
the incomprehensible counter-intuitive
complexity of quantum reality,
thinking about death and recurrence,
of God’s creation of time from eternity,
and even then I knew a life of the mind
was the best place I could live.

Then came music, and theater, and dance,
mosh pits, and martial arts, and manual labor,
and I found my body is remarkably able,
lithe and strong and agile,
and I could be as effortless as
I always thought my classmates were.
And I learned my mind works better
when I’m moving, and I didn’t expect that.
I still think about time, but measure it now
with breath and heartbeats and foot falls,
and I know how existence feels when my body
swirls through space to the rhythm
of someone else’s music, and how time
and recurrence manifest in the thrilling
contractions of muscle fibers.
Everything that exists is motion
and I celebrate my cosmology
in the movements only my body can make.