The Marathon journey is in its fourth year. Just Enjoy Yourself is the current incarnation. Let’s do it!

Back at Montco today, February 28, 2020. I was a little later than usual because I stopped at the grocery on the way. Non-perishables, but I could easily have bought almost anything and left it in the car – it’s as cold as a refrigerator today outside.

Look at Cara Mia McGill out there in the parking lot – plenty of friends to surround her today.

I settled in on the upper floor of the library and pulled out my papers and notebooks to see what’s what.

I am in the mood for diving in behind some words or fragments of ideas today. Prompts, that’s my game. From cut-out phrases to forms such as haiku or shadorma to the 50 syllable 5 line rhyme scheme, I will make some choices. I was going to work on poems for the Large Artist Sketchbook 2020 – but I forgot it and left it at home. I think that’s telling me something, right? Not a Sketchbook day, I guess.

So let’s get this writing session going. Here are some selections from today.

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Here is one from some cut-out phrases. I pasted lines of them in my notebook and this poem is derived from a section. I like the ideas that the random collection of words gives me. As for the subject, I like the idea of visiting or having a visitor but at the same time I find disruption of my routines a strain. That is where this poem came from – how someone else might see someone like me in this situation.

2.
Through the processes of this decade
each one keeping to its turn
this visit ends
like all the others in all the years before
and we now arrive at my suitcase
as it silently sets about the beginnings of being in transit
You fold my clothes with anxious slow precision
I with the satisfaction of finishing a good meal
not hungry for the next one yet. The rooms that will be
counted empty Oh, you said, I will miss you so much
a long face and a resigned voice. But I knew
pushing aside the contrasting piles of clothing
untidy division of folded and waiting to be folded
that when my train leaves the station
the mix of Hurry up and be gone Please stay another day
the tightness around your ribs
it will relax and let you fall into the
welcome back to us
your annotated grocery lists and your careful lawn mowing and
your neat quiet house no one breathing its air but you
Along about two o’clock
you’ll wonder where the train might be on its journey.

One visit
once each year
is enough.
I feel it in my bones I will see you again next year.

 

You see these little guys everywhere. It stands to reason they have their life cycle, too. A haiku.

6.
hidden in the weeds
semi-retired garden gnome
long past ambition

 

I was thinking of a place where I’ve run or walked for some years, Norristown Farm Park, for this tanka. This park is the farmland attached to the former state mental hospital in Norristown, PA (from when part of the patients’ therapy was to engage in work, if they were able). Though this practice is long over and the park is no longer associated with the hospital, the land is still rented out to farmers and there are soy and corn fields lining the roads and trails in many sections of the park. The rows are maybe not as long as I say here, but when the corn is high, it is an impressive sight.

5.

in a group photo
stalks of corn in mile-long rows
squint into the light
the whole field standing and turned
posed in three-quarter profile

 

Thank you for reading!