Up past the owls
down past the trees
and on to the end.
Sharp stop.
L O N G S T R E T C H.
Nar/row – cut in half.
Join the river, along the river,
here between you and the water
turn again, past the light
the waste.
For NaPoWriMo day 19, where the prompt is this:
Our (optional) prompt for the day takes it cue from Brady’s suggestion that erasure/word banks can allow for compelling repetitive effects. Today we challenge you to write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem.
I wrote a paragraph about my drive to work. I think I’ve kept the sense of a journey in this poem. It was tricky to write a paragraph knowing that I would be pulling words from it, (and tempting to put in words that would be useful in a poem), but I tried to keep it very factual and to the point. There are owls there, we often see them. I feel no guilt about putting them in.