Today’s prompt challenges to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. It could be a real place, like your local park, or an imaginary or unreal place, like “the bottom of your heart,” or “where missing socks go.” Fill your poem with sensory details, and make them as wild or intimate as you like.
9th year of Na/GloPoWriMo completed and 35 poems written! Thank you, Maureen, and all the poets, for inspiring the infinite weaving of the poetry rope.
To my readers, if you are here to enjoy poetry from this event, I will have already moved them from public view to undergo redrafting before publishing again. However, you can find this closing poem and others as explained below.
Here is a list of my previous Na/GloPoWriMo featured poems: The Return of the Rose (2020), Allegory of Dancing (2019), Spring Wedding (2017) and Berry-Ho, Merry-Ho (2014).
Take a basket fit for a cabbage
and walk your heart to a market.
Postpone the advice to take out
because your heart is not a traitor.
Stop only to decode why you hide
then keep on until the traffic lights.
It doesn’t matter what the color is
there, you will be tested on patience.
Cross to the direction of the market
and keep speaking to your heart.
At the market, choose a red cabbage
the size of your heart misgivings.
Walk back home and do the same;
talk to your heart and cross the light.
Place the cabbage on a chopping board,
and ready your heart for preparation.
Remove the old and worn leaves,
that hinder your heart from redemption.
Cut out the core and any hard stalk
binding you to doubt and suspicion.
Rinse the cabbage, then chop or slice it
depending on the size of your heart’s fear.
Add lemon to preserve the red color
because your heart is rebirthing.
Boil or stir fry the cabbage to preferred
crunchiness, and look not back to the past.
Serve the cabbage with preferred grain
of kindness and acceptance to your failures.
Sit down to enjoy the warm meal
as the heart takes its place in life again.
Copyright © 2021, Gloria D. Gonsalves. All rights reserved.
Shuku
May 1, 2021 - 8:26 am ·<3 Gloria In Excelsis alright, I just wanted to say that even though illness and work stress kept me from finishing up NaPo properly this year (I really wish I could have done all 30 days but it really wasn't possible, and I'm still trying to tell myself it was ok not to do so), I have really, really loved and enjoyed reading all of your poems and seeing your work again. You are one of the people I look forward to reading every year. Do you have an email address by which I could be in contact, because I am still working on lettering phrases, and I have one of yours I want to show you eventually! There's next year's NaPo, but there's the rest of the year to poem and I really hope to be reading much more of your work ALL YEAR ROUND. <3
–Shuku
Gloria
May 1, 2021 - 10:09 am ·Aww, Shuku. You are among the kindest cheer leaders I know in this poetry gig. I have often thought of you, especially when you missed. An email connected to this comment is coming your way and hoping it reaches you. If not, try the contact me form on my landing page and we will take it from there.