Today's prompt: "Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of gifts and joy. What would you give yourself, if you could have anything? What would you give someone else?"
Joy is quite hard for me to write about; it has already been on my mind that I need to find ways to do so more. I have felt deeply happy in Ajijic, Mexico, and loved the time I spent in a self-designed writer's retreat there in winter 2018 (see earlier entries on this blog). I struggle to write about it, though -- perhaps because I haven't actually lived there, so it comes across too much as exotic travelogue or sentimentalizing. But that time, and of course writing itself, are deep gifts I have given myself. And I know Ajijic -- and the gift of travel -- will continue to be in my future.
I decided to keep it very simple here (also I have a lot to do today!) and just write a couple of linked haiku, a favorite NaPoWriMo form of Vince Gotera. Not quite perfect; "families" in the second stanza needs to be read as two syllables, though I do say it that way. I may keep going with this at a later time.
As I was writing, I realized the details made it a perfect poem to set on a Sunday, and today is Sunday too. Nieve, which literally means "snow," is common shorthand for nieve de garrafa, an incredibly delicious Mexican frozen treat that is sold by street vendors along the lakeshore.
Sunday in Ajijic
Bells and china ring,
horses clatter cobblestones,
birds squawk out of sight.
Families, lovers
stroll the sunny malecón,
nieve on their tongues.
Mountain above me,
Lake Chapala below me,
fingers on the keys.
No comments:
Post a Comment