Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz Poetry

April 6, 2017 Poem: “A Bowl of Blackberries”

Posted on by

NaPoWriMo 2017 April 6

A Bowl of Blackberries

Like its very distant cousin, the crisply alabaster lotus,
the blackberry sinks roots deep in moist sand and mud;
but instead of a long, pure, central shaft rising
to support a single porcelain-white bowl filled with calm light,
the blackberry unspools its prickling brambles laterally—
meters and meters of looping, minute red thorns
spun headlong on tough, green cables resistant to pruning, each burning
with a myriad of fruit. Some I now see resting here:
a heap of honeyed coals, and each one alive with embers,
clusters of summer fire, alight with understory
of blood-purpled cordial, precious as caviar or eyesight or
fireflies; like justice outpacing mercy, each delivering
its complex cluster of sweet but stinging juice
with the prophetic bitter wood of seed.

Leslie Schultz

This poem started from looking more closely at things I see every day in my dining room and kitchen. I went to bed last night and awoke dreaming of blackberries, lotuses, and light.

Hope your day is full of sweet surprises!

LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 5, 2017 Poem: “Maple, Sky, Clouds”

Posted on by

NaPoWriMo 2017 April 5

Maple, Sky, Clouds

White dappled blue, tapped by red—
looking up at the spring sky
upends my human head.
I don’t imagine I now can fly;

I feel as though I’m falling
into a welcoming well;
that something or someone is calling
or ringing a silver bell,

inviting me downward, and deeper
than I’ve ever ventured before—
Like Alice, I’m falling steeper
than the earth’s magnetic core,

and I’ll finally get to the bottom
of something I need to know,
where something waits, wise and solemn,
beneath this sweet vertigo.

Leslie Schultz

I find it both nerve-wracking and exhilarating to write a new poem and make it public on the same day. It helps if I regard it in a painterly way, as a sketch or a plein-air study. Today’s poem was inspired by these images I took yesterday in our garden, and, despite the formal differences, by the NaPoWriMo prompt inspired by Mary Oliver. (The NaPoWriMo site has a link to a rare interview with her.)

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 4, 2017 Poem: “Rain on Mars”

Posted on by

NaPoWriMo 2017 April 4

Rain on Mars

They all say it’s impossible.
Our weather wizards agree:
it’s as highly implausible
as a mesmerizing story,

or blue wisps of lyric
glued to scaffolded iron,
some scrambled chimeric
with the head of a lion.

Cold spring time on Mars
blows with blossoms of rust.
When you reach for the stars,
what you’ll find is: just dust.

Those are the facts
for what they are worth.
For magical acts
down here on Earth,

if you’d rather ponder
how things might look,
then climb up over yonder,
and dive into a book.

Leslie Schultz

This sculpture, just a few blocks from my house, is one I see most days. It inspires me, and I have been contemplating a poem about it for many months. Not this poem!  A deeper, more reflective, true-science under-girded epic was what I imagined. This actual silly set of verses was inspired by the sculpture’s name and its siting. Perhaps I can write the one I imagine in the future.

Mars has long fascinated me, too. It was thrilling to send through NASA’s visionary program of poetry and probes, one of my haiku about the red planet on the MAVEN mission. And it was fiction–specifically reading Ray Bradbury’s classic, The Martian Chronicles, when I was in middle school–that ignited my imagination about the cosmos. Still not much of an astrophysicist, but I can identify Mars in the sky these days and tell a planet from a star.

Here on Earth, I feel very glad and so lucky to live in a place that values art and science–a place of the joy in liberal arts. This sculpture project, fourth one in a series created by students at the Northfield High School, was funded by a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC) with money made possible by Minnesota’s visionary Legacy Amendment, and supported enthusiastically by the City and the people of Northfield.

So, today, if I can’t be Martian, color me Minnesotan!

LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 1, 2017 “Sonnet Despite Rain”

Posted on by

NaPoWriMo 2017 April 1

Sonnet Despite Rain
for E. K.
 
I have a friend who sings each time it rains,
who might, for all I know, dance in it, too.
Even the melancholy moans of trains
sliding through wet nights take on a lighter hue
for her, as if, speeding down now-slick tracks,
all the freight cars are crammed with happy news—
checks, cards, and letters spilling from mail sacks,
all addressed to her, rain-washed clean of woes.

I like the idea of a gentle rain
coaxing flowers from dusty, barren ground
each April, inciting swells of bird song.
Yet actual rain clouds bring me real pain—
drumming their melancholy tapping sound,
insisting my day and my world are wrong.

Leslie Schultz

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April & National Poetry Month–And NaPoWriMo Returns!

Posted on by

Poetry Quote Plutarch

Poem Barn One

This year, I am again going to participate in the National Poetry Writing Month project–“NaPoWriMo” to insiders!  If you aren’t familiar with this annual “poetry boot camp”, you can learn more about it here. This is a fantastic website–run by a visionary volunteer poet named Maureen Thorsen–that offers poetry lovers a wealth of ideas and interesting links, and even provides writing prompt suggestions each day in April. (Thank you, Maureen!)

Analogous to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which attracts more than 300,000 writers who sign up to write 50,000 words during the month of November (and hold themselves accountable by posting their word counts each day), the poetry version invites poets to write (and if they wish, to share publicly through online posting) one poem each day in April.

Having made it across the finishing line last year without skipping any days, I am looking forward to this April’s poetic marathon. I shall try to find some graphic accompaniment for each day’s poem, too.

Thank you for your support–and if you, too, are participating this year, let me know. We can silently cheer each other on!

Yours in Poetry,

Sig Flowers