I just discovered this: NaPoWriMo, in which you write a poem everyday! I am super sad that I missed out on starting this on April 1st. But I think I will follow the rest of the prompts. It’s a good way to excercise that part of my brain. I probably won’t post everything that I write, but perhaps,  if I am feeling brave, I will post some of it.

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about an animal. I didn’t write anything – yet. But I found one that I wrote last summer when I was going through a poetry writing bender. I was working through a fabulous book called Writing Poetry from the Inside Out. The author suggests using “Poem sketches.” These are four words that you use to form the skeleton of your poem. You choose the four words intuitively and then write the poem around those words.

The poems from these exercises are in no way finished, and in fact, I will probably go in today and play around with this one. But I thought it might be fun to share, especially since birds are featured in the poem.

I have thought about birds a lot lately.  I get up before dawn everyday and have enjoyed hearing the sunrise (as opposed to seeing it). When the sun rises I can hear a beautiful symphony of birds singing outside and it makes my heart happy.

The words for this poem sketch were: Ecstasy, Garments, Linger, Dawn. I wrote it the morning after a lightening storm, the one that caused Mt. Hood to catch on fire, actually.

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The flashes of light
From the sky at dawn
Linger in my head.
The birds wear their
New wet garments
As they sing their songs
About the ecstasy of being.

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Related articles

• Day 6/ NaPoWriMo 2012/ Poem Prompt (poetart.wordpress.com)
• Day 6 NaPoWriMo and my 100th post! An Elephant poem (quillfyre.wordpress.com)
• National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) (buddhafulkat.com)