This month Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington poets are participating in National Poetry Writing Month. Every day we will offer up a new poem by a writer in our community. Check back after 6:00pm for the Prompt of the Day and the selected resulting poem.
Day 12 Write a poem about a dull thing that you own, and why (and how) you love it.
Bulova by Mary Peckham
Not the glossiest of graduation gifts—
carefully chosen luggage,
affordable, canvas, brown
(no internet to guide me)
and a small, silvered
alarm clock.
Bulova. Analog.
I’m an analog girl,
scratched-face watch with hands,
kitchen, living room clocks,
phone and appliances
so much smarter than I.
Off to England, I truly believed
I might still find the middle ages,
scullery maids and sundials.
Compact companion—
nothing fancy, just
time of day and wakeup
all I really needed—
shiny at the start
like me,
now grimy in the grooves,
corrosion on your contacts,
you witnessed every
bedtime, bottle, bedmate,
never judging,
offering always
a wake up call, a new day.
One-of-a-kind
treasured gift
from a one-of-a-kind,
salt of the prairie-earth
no-nonsense analog gal
(felled by a one-of-a-kind
incurable whirlwind of cancers).
I have scraped
corroded battery clips,
replaced your AAs time
after time.
I can longer make you go,
but cannot let you go.