2023 NaPM 19 April

[RiverNotch]

Here is 2015's "biggest" prompt. By milo:

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month. 

Topic 19: Write a poem inspired by looking out your window.
Form: any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[Quixilated]

(Out The Car Window While Driving)

The road ahead was encased in a cocoon
of soft yellow light. It looked magical
like it should lead to a pot of gold,
or a quest, or a portal to another world. 
It was the hero’s road at the story’s end,
or a lover’s lane at the end of the movie
(once they’ve worked out all their misunderstandings).

But all I could think about in that moment
was that the sunset was a metaphor. 
Not any specific metaphor, just an empty metaphor
waiting to be applied in some other scenario.
I felt like I was caught inside this sunset-metaphor
by accident, or as a side character or onlooker. 
It wasn’t my sunset. 
Like being the guest at a wedding, 
I can observe, but it isn’t mine.
I don’t know whose hero-road that was
or where that metaphor was headed.

It was a strange feeling
to appreciate the sunset in all its glory,
and then set it aside into a file
labeled ‘stock footage of a metaphor.’

[TranquillityBase]

A cloud of cow-pen daisies
rise in a wave, 
a few early blooms, 
yellow tipping the flocking green
surrounding a rusted iron kettle
filled with a debris of rock and wood -
April rises to its peak
before summer bears down
and the sun conquers all.

[Mark A Becker]

Cardinals Again!

Looking out the kitchen window
to the boxwood, where we hear them,
chirping, restless in their nest,
and their parents never seem to rest.

Always swooping in and out 
with another bug or worm,
chasing off the crows that come
to do their hatchlings harm.

We keep our eyes glued on the yard,
for when those hatchlings try;
they pop out their heads, and flap
real hard... until they finally fly.

[dukealien]

Interference


Looking at my window I see first
white strokes of mini-blinds before its glass
then their reflections from both surfaces
before sight penetrates to air and light.
But next, some feet beyond, tall picket fence:
white also but its stripes are vertical
exposing snippets of my neighbor’s lawn
near-polarized by crossing with my blinds.
Then, further out, another white array
of pickets to my neighbor’s other side...
yet sometimes I perceive three romping dogs
brown, yellow, black through pin-holes as it were
which, taken all together, signify.

[CRNDLSM]

How much time have I spent
Sitting here, foot on the brake
All the cars I've driven, slept in.
Looking out that window, cars
Clouds, trees, nothing specific.
Waiting in a parking lot, traffic,
The drive thru, traveling, work,
It's a shell Ill outgrow, discard,
And replace, for my entire life.

[Wjames]

There are two windows in my basement
apartment. The one in my bathroom
is opaque, letting natural light
touch my skin as I shower off
the must that accumulates
underground.

The window in the other room
looks up at the red brick wall
of the neighbours, and the small
alley between our places
where I occasionally glimpse
calves and shoes walking
someplace else.

[RiverNotch]

One summer's day, I watched a rat
scramble into the space between
our neighbor's ceiling and their roof,
panels of corrugated metal
suspended by worm-eaten beams
of hardwood over plywood sheets
perhaps came closest to the trees
its forebears here called home.

The fruits they ate, the leaves they picked
to mattress beds for their striplings,
the twigs they wove to canopy
their fillies from the scorching heat:
all these, my ancestors had seized
for little more than kindling

and now we dare to call them pests!
What hand, I wonder, comes to saw
straight through the reinforced concrete
now sprawling past this shaven hill?
What fire, from aggregate and steel,
is waiting to be lit?