why this challenge is worthwhile.
It is exciting to write a poem everyday. It is exciting because every night as a fall asleep, I feel as if I have done something meaningful, even if it is only a few lines long. Because when I wake up in the morning I have that sense of: something exciting happened yesterday! and then I remember, "Ah-hah! I wrote something! I wonder if it is any good." Then I look at it, and tweak it. Even more exciting, though, is the way the world looks different. The knowledge that I will have to write a poem at the end of the day makes me take in everything in a more aware manner. Every event, every newspaper article, every scent, every word that I read, hear or speak has the possibility of being in that night's poem.
September is Goose Hunting Season
As the geese meet
with the nasty sting of steel*
As the bodies dive
and the souls rise
As the migration becomes
transmigration
The holes in the sky briefly become
memory spaces**
Filled not with last words
but with all worlds.
*"Come over here and I'll give you the nasty sting of steel." Thomas Venezia, speaking to geese, quoted in "Overkill" by John Vaillant, Atlantic Monthly April 2003 pgs. 121-126
**John Adams says of his Transmigration of Souls that it is a "memory space." quoted in Atlantic Monthly, April 2003 by David Schiff, pgs 127-130.
September is Goose Hunting Season
As the geese meet
with the nasty sting of steel*
As the bodies dive
and the souls rise
As the migration becomes
transmigration
The holes in the sky briefly become
memory spaces**
Filled not with last words
but with all worlds.
*"Come over here and I'll give you the nasty sting of steel." Thomas Venezia, speaking to geese, quoted in "Overkill" by John Vaillant, Atlantic Monthly April 2003 pgs. 121-126
**John Adams says of his Transmigration of Souls that it is a "memory space." quoted in Atlantic Monthly, April 2003 by David Schiff, pgs 127-130.