We began on a full moon,
each craft choice bright, round, revealed.
We fought the darkness each day,
the muse shadowed by ourselves
alone. Then G-d's fingernail 
appeared just before the night
at its darkest. Day by day,
we know now, waxing, waning,
the circle is unbroken. 
Trust me -- unbroken, always.
Now, once again, the full moon
to light our path, step by step.

A celebration of a full month of a poem a day in community. 

She had seen faces on her phone each day,
all day, contoured, smooth. Thick, long eyelashes.
A ring light out of frame branded perfect
circles in each wide, liked, shared, open eye.

It mattered little what the faces said.
She hoped -- she longed -- to frame herself like this,
to be seen (& not seen) as she had wished. 
Gradually, her face would change. But would she?

She knew some had lost themselves in this chase.
They arrived at a new self exhausting
to maintain, based on some algorithm,
some digital fast fashion. Halfway there, 

could she change her mind? Would her face follow?
Was she ready for the surface of things? 

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem about the seen & the unseen (which happens to be the name of a song I love). The image is from here.

Resolve to think quietly & bravely,
taking up the burden of selflessness.
You will fail. You will try to solve it all.

Words of wisdom will come -- maybe not yours --
and you'll discover the burden lightened,
the effort cleansing. Your mind will seem clear,
but the worry, the ego will return.

Spectres of judgment & mercy will dance
through the torn curtain of your certainty
while you limp & pause, ready to give up.
This part -- a kind of death -- comes to us all.

A thistle weighed down by rain bends earthward.
With time, with grace, with the light of the skies,
it rights itself -- frail, still, rooted, alive. 

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem of instruction.

Attendance is required
but participation
can't be. [A kid hands a
doctor's note.] I think more
espresso would last me
for the morning. "Mr. 
Garza, what work will we
have Tuesday? "Will that be 
in class or on our own?"
[Just read Blackbaud, damn you.
Kidding, kidding.] [sigh] [A
late kid enters loudly.]
"My laptop just died." "The 
new slides should make this clear.
Open ... [A kid asks to go
pee.] slides six & seven ...
[quickly regrets it] [sigh]
[Rolling waves of laughter,
screams] "Mr. Garza, I'll
try to do it but not 
until the end of my 
volleyball tournament.
Will you mark the paper
excused or unexcused?"
"You choose". My moment of
Zen. Log off & touch grass.  

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem including interruptions. 

There's a bend in the road tennis ball throwing distance
from our front door. The city put a sign there,
warning you not to drop trash, a message I thought
unnecessary for neighbors like mine.

Sometimes someone mows this field bordered by 
overgrown trees & a brackish creek. Walk through
the undergrowth, and you can see evidence
of child's play & teenage weekend nights, the natural
detritus of suburban rituals of near-freedom, of wildness
within their aquarium, so far from the open waters
of their adulthood.

Walk far enough back into that postage stamp
of the wild, and you can almost see what it was.
A flat low kind of prairie. 

Recently, we got snow -- a rarity here. I bundled up,
eager to see the blanketed field. Two steps past
the city sign, my foot fell on a twig pillowed 
beneath the snow. 

With its snap, four coyotes stood as one,
eyed me, and loped off through the high brown grass.

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem about a landscape of your life. 

We took the toll road, a slightly faster
route to the funeral home. We parked just
as Amens gave way to Remember whens.

Pews emptied, the slideshow in the background.
Across the chapel, he saw I was there. 
We were best friends once, and it all came back.

His mom fed me & tolerated me
countless noisy weekend nights. One more kid
giggling down the hall well past their bedtime.

He has grown into a man who shows love
by touch, hugging, his hand on my shoulder.
We stood just like that. His loving hand still.
Years peeled away, our brown eyes locked, glistened.

And I said what my wife's family says:
May her memory be a blessing. And
right there, we shared, revived those memories.

A big wreck slowed our way home, thick red line
on the GPS, an artery slowed
to urban crawl through urban sprawl. We talked
as only families can. "He got old!"
"Who was that again?" "Where will he live now?"

My pocket buzzes. "Thanks for coming. Great
seeing all of you." I text a reply,
imagine him watching the three dots flash,
waiting to see what his best friend will say. 

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem about loss. 

There used to be a tree right there.
She was a gnarled thing, having with-
stood storms, drought, saws, plastic bags
loosely tangled from root to crown.
She spun cotton through the campus -- 
her late spring sowing of herself -- 
and for all that, not even a
shadow remains of her branches.

I remember field days, track meets
her trunk provided a craggy
but firm backrest. Shade & shelter
demolished like some trees before 
her -- to make paper, this pencil.
Her footprint's here, these few loose lines
I plant, which might take root for you,
no stranger to gaps in the sky.

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem whose first words of each line come from the first words of each line from another poem. Here, James Wright's "The Shadow and the Real".

Hummingbird. English
name, American by birth.
They are flying jewels

in Spanish, a name
for eyes not ears, for motion -- 
bird watching for real.

Their hearts miniscule,
An infant's fingernail big.
Just 2,000,000 beats

is all that we have
to spend. Bacteria, worms,
tortoises, salmon,

butterflies, blue whales
all have chambers of some kind --
we all churn inside.

Blood pressure is good.
Deep red fluid rhythm through
each blessed bejeweled day. 


Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Rewrite a text you like in haiku. Here, Brian Doyle's Joyas Voladoras, which I've quoted at "We all churn inside".

The mind is a volunteer.
Each idea, a vessel
to be shaped & fired,
and only with care, to be filled.
The mind is a collaborator.
Each paragraph, the record
of a compulsion, a fevered
other self in motion.
The mind is a gardener.
Each reason rooted & rowdy,
crude in its beginnings,
harvested in its time.
The mind is a commoner.
The thought is a king.

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem including quotations from a source, here, Montaigne's On the Education of Children.  

I mourn the loss of children
persuaded to leave behind
play. These ex-children find
themselves curating CVs.

The life of the mind includes
stretched limbs, taxed lungs, and laughter --
and skinned knees, and loss, after
games they were told were pointless.

Smart kids smart, right? We all do. 
And at some age, we remove
recess & add time to prove
they listened to what was said

room to room, seated hours
of focused planned course content.
To be a prepared student
is to daily reconcile

oneself to a health hazard: 
“Sitting is the new smoking”.
Learning kills – I’m not joking.
It doesn’t kill what it should.

I hope students gain closed minds:
Closed to lazy ideas, 
to bad faith logorrhea.
I hope we take them outside.

Years ago, I did. One kid
said, “I … I don’t remember
how to play.” But an ember
was fanned by his closest friends

goofing on the monkey bars.
He joined them. Nobody fell.
Not once did I think to tell
them to be careful. They were

in some kind of awakened
flow. And then the block ended,
they dusted off, grinning, said
see ya thanks for a great class. 

He’s a photographer now.
Out in the world, wide open
eyes, no thought of that day when
he swung bar to bar. The sun

kaleidoscoped on us all. 

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem about play.