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 16: Today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.
Day 16 In the House Where I Live by Shana Ritter
In the house where I live
the bedroom is full of light and years
and years of sleeping there, the room
holds the very dust of us.
In the house where I live
the piano isn’t played but arranged
along the keyboard cover and its top
years of family photos displayed.
In the house where I live the kitchen is blue
with yellow counter tops, blue and white
plates and old cups and saucers on the walls
always a pot or pan on the stove.
In the house where I live you come in
through the screened in porch facing
west and north, birds at the feeders
the pond just beyond.
I’ve lived here the longest of anywhere
claim the slope of the ground, the trees
that surround, the long driveway leading
up the hill, here where I’ve learned stillness
here, in the house where I live.