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.

Prompt Day 3:  Today, I’d like to challenge you to  write something that involves a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time. Perhaps, as you do, you can focus on imagery, or sound, or emotional content (or all three!)

Meander; Swedish Death Cleaning Day by Beth Lodge-Rigal

The slim stationary box somehow preserved
under stacks of composition notebooks
workshop folders, flattened paper bags,
saved with the illusion of recycling possibility,
recovers memory.
In the box, a scrap of a poem left in my high school
locker. The boy inspired me to wear white
Jack Purcell sneakers with my Levi straight
Leg Jeans, lock meaningful eye-contact
above the black music stands in band, and go
for late night walks under streetlamps
evoking a 1940’s film noir set.
He noticed my love of ratty sweaters and
wool hiking socks and might grin today
for what has not changed.
Back then, we blared brass instruments
in public parks for fun, inspired impromptu
parades and spent Thursday evenings
dancing in lines and circles hand to shoulder
with college students, in a haze of patchouli
and human hippie sweat.
Before he was famously bald, his hair fell
across his eyes, his long fingers gestured
Maestro-like, pondering the mysteries
of mystics, the power of his pen.
I floated, silent, in the basking light of so much
brilliance– smiled and tried to follow along while
his hands traced the energetic arcs of ideas.
It was cool once upon a time to
type a poem and sign initials in neat block
print. Suppose the words matter less than
the effort they took, the vulnerability they
represent, the boy-man they sought to
show alive – noticing the girl-woman
behind the music stand. Suppose today
the discovery, as I let go of scrap after scrap
of meaningless ephemera, this slim box
remembers someone who thought me
worthy of a few fragile lines, who waited
for mine in return, walked on into a life
and might even wonder now and again
if our children could care less about
excavating evidence of the children we were.
I save the box, unable to make this
decision for any of them today. My need is
suspicious. My pleasure is palpable