Slowly on prompt! This poem includes the point of view of the old house–in a manner of speaking. A surprise visit from a lightning rod suggests that it may become an important symbol in my rewrite.
Prompt from Napowrimo: “. . .our optional prompt for the day! Start off by reading Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s “Lockdown Garden.” Now, try to write a poem of your own that has multiple numbered sections. Attempt to have each section be in dialogue with the others, like a song where a different person sings each verse, giving a different point of view. Set the poem in a specific place that you used to spend a lot of time in, but don’t spend time in anymore.”
She never goes there anymore
I.
Cold & creaky, the house resists
concrete & wrought iron—
“modernizing” father does each weekend.
Mint green trim, never finished,
contrasts peeling yellow paint.
Lightning rod safely routes destruction
to the ground, but supercharged bolts
are not the only danger.
II
She was only five, wandering
through the meadow,
goldenrod & cattails
higher than her head.
No one noticed she was missing
until the dinner bell.
III
Mary, Dina, Linda, where are you?”
Come here now. We’ve got corn to husk,
beans to snap for dinner.
IV
Follow me to climb this tree. I’ll help you
up to the big branches. Keep climbing.
Climb, climb, climb the cottonwood tree.
Look at the leaves shimmering,
keep reaching up. Climb until the branches
are so spindly, I’ll have to stop. You can go alone,
you sway with the wind. Until like a cat,
she was so high into the spindly branches,
she couldn’t turn around or
back down. She heard her mother call.
V
“I don’t hear it,” the sleepy sister, just
awakened, whispered. Turning on her
pillow to go back to sleep, bells in the
Christmas box from the closet jingled.
Sisters pull covers over their heads.
Thump, thump, thump, the man with
a wooden leg in the attic!
They jump from the bed, streak
down the hall, down the steps, & into
mother’s room. She sends them
away back into the dark.
VI
Heading to hide in the apple tree,
she takes her mystery book
to the meadow, the house behind
her. Startled from her wild
flower reverie when pheasants
fly up in her face.
Jacquelyn Markham (4/23/2023)
Poet Voice 