Greetings on this Tuesday! This is my first time participating in the Progressive Poem, which was founded in 2012 by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. I think it’s an awesome project and has been so much fun to follow. This year it is hosted by Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche. Thanks to both of you.
This poem has a dramatic feel. It’s a story that begins with the “I” of the poem setting out very early, just before dawn on a spring day with provisions and a banjo. The setting is gorgeous and evolves with every line. There is constant movement forward. As we get deeper into the wooded and grassy journey, the sun awakens everything along the path, the trees, the bees.
Then something happens at the beginning of the fourth stanza and that action/scene continues. I spent hours thinking about how to move forward and I hope Julieanne likes one of my options.
Thank you, Rose Capelli for giving me two interesting lines to choose from:
Safely exiting this strange ballet
or,
My heart aware, content to share.
Progressive Poem 2020 Sweet violets shimmy, daffodils sway along the wiregrass path to the lake I carry a rucksack of tasty cakes and a banjo passed down from my gram. I follow the tracks of deer and raccoon and echo the call of a wandering loon. A whispering breeze joins in our song and night melts into a rose gold dawn Deep into nature’s embrace, I fold. Promise of spring helps shake the cold hints of sun lightly dapple the trees calling out the sleepy bees Leaf-litter crackles…I pause. Twig snaps. I gasp! Shudder! Breathe out. Relax… as a whitetail doe comes into view. She shifts and spotted fawns debut. We freeze. My green eyes and her brown Meet and lock. Time slows down. I scatter the cakes, backing away Safely exiting this strange ballet.
I figure that my line has to move the poem forward, past the doe and fawn. So here are the two lines I offer to Julieanne: I continue the path that winds down to the lake. or I shake from my rucksack sweet sticky crumbs,
2020 Progressive Poem
1 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch at deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Bigi at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan