Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo Challenge 2019

Wild Card Farewell: “ARS POETICA” for April 30, 2019

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Ars Poetica
  
 A poem slips open into your hand
 like a cracked egg falling, wobbly but whole,
 into your old blue china mixing bowl,
 nascent but complete, soon to be transformed—
  
 new matrix binding chance observation,
 puzzled memory, and flash points of insight
 with enough artistry to draw attention.
 Some few go deep, bring a bright steel rivet
  
 to strengthen the battleship of the brain;
 platinum threads to reweave a broken heart,
 mending its weary net. Where there is pain,
 we cry out to our old mother art.
  
 Cake or bread? Confection or contusion?
 A poem serves up its startling fusion.
  
 Leslie Schultz

Thank you for joining me for this circadian exploration of words and pictures during April! Wishing you a season filled with exciting discoveries, poetic, pictorial, and otherwise!

  LESLIE

Wild Card: “Song” for April 29, 2019

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Song
  
 Ashes to ashes,
 Dust to dust.
 Tarnish to tarnish,
 Rust to rust.
  
 Raindrop to raindrop,
 Sun to sun.
 Night is now finished,
 Day has begun.
  
 Birdsong or plainsong?
 Coffee or tea?
 Umbrellas make boats
 on the briny sea.
  
 Look! Cows are leaping
 Over the moon,
 As we coin shining words
 For a dark old tune.
  
 Leslie Schultz

Wild Card: “Vranac” for April 28, 2019

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Vranac
             for Julia and Bob Denne
  
 I tasted a little once,
 a glass you brought—
 fragrant, clear but dense—
 berry tarred 
 with burnt oak,
 flavors of summer 
 churned into late
 autumn. Ripened
 and bottled on a slope
 in Montenegro, 
 that wine held fast
 the ombres
 of dark red velvet, 
 slightly sun-faded,
 like covers 
 of old hymnals.
  
 This spring, between
 squalls of late snows, 
 you offer photographs—
 shy woodland 
 blooms, rising
 into chill green air:
red trillium— 
strong pulse,
 black earth and flame,
intoxicating hue
 that I never before knew.
  
 Now, I am drinking it in. 
  
 Thank you.
  
 Leslie Schultz
Photo: Julia Denne, 2019

Photo: Julia Denne, 2019

Wild Card: “Weathering” for April 27, 2019

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Weathering
  
 What is raised up in a storm of bright hope
 lifts the heart, too. We work together
 to make dreams come true. Can we make them stay?
  
 We tend, cultivate, patch, paint, and repair—
 year after year after eventful year—
 and our dreams support us, provide a roof
 to shelter honorable, essential work.
  
 For a while. For the winds of change decree
 nothing lasts for always in the same way.
 Cathedrals can combust in Gothic flames.
 Prairie storms can derange the upstanding beams
 of barns that have held our generations.
  
Demolished dreams clear the ground for different seed, 
 those new chapters we mightily resist, but need.
  
 Leslie Schultz
Photo: Leslie Schultz (circa 1987)

Photo: Leslie Schultz (circa 1987)
Photo: Leslie Schultz (circa 1989)
Photo: Marea Mohr (April 2019)
Photo: Marea Mohr (April 2019)
Photo: Marea Mohr (April 2019)

“Zebras” for April 26, 2019

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Zebras
  
 I fashion zebras
 however I can. 
  
 Each one is distinct,
 printed with 
  
 patterns decreed
 under her skin.
  
 I know that the wild
 herds in my mind
  
 will not stampede
 across this page.
  
 They are fierce, free,
 run where they will.
  
 Each zebra is shy 
of reins, contains 

whole rainbows, 
has no need of me, 
  
 but still I sing to each.
 I summon them by
  
 stroking black ink
 on fields of blank 
  
 white. Maybe they
will turn, catch me 
  
 in nets cast by
 their bold stripes.
  
Then, just 
 for a moment,
  
 I can stand near, 
 breathe alongside.
  
 Leslie Schultz
Photo: Leslie Schultz “Striped Shadow”
Photo: Leslie Schultz “Polar Zebra”
Photo: michael4wein (pixabay)
Photo: Felix Broennimann, polygon-designs (pixabay)