Our craft resource for the day is a series of reflections by Wesley McNair on “indirect entry” into a poem. McNair writes of inviting mystery and uncertainty into our poems, both with respect to the writing process and the finished work.

And now for our daily prompt (optional as always). I’ve found this one rather useful in trying to ‘surprise’ myself into writing something I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:

The sun can’t rise in the west.

A circle can’t have corners.

Pigs can’t fly.

The clock can’t strike thirteen.

The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.

A mouse can’t eat an elephant.

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A lovely prompt to write a poem in which the impossible happens. Nothing’s Impossible, so I believe. I picked up today’s newspaper and found in one day, news that I thought was impossible : North Korea and South Korea to sign a peace treaty, the first after 1950-1953. India finally passed the law of death penalty for child rapists and a country (Burma) ruled by a woman who was given the Nobel Peace Prize for pro-democracy activism, says nothing when thousands flee the country.

Spring’s here earlier this year, making life tough for migratory birds and other animals and yet Trump does not seem to understand the urgency to reduce global warming. Did it seem possible that the great Super-Power could be led by a person who fails to understand that, which we all can see? But its happening. So Nothing’s Impossible.

If walking on land becomes impossible for pigs, they might just develop wings to fly (isn’t that what the theory of Evolution and natural selection, states) and a mouse could nibble away an elephant (somehow I think in all sanity that’s possible only if the elephant’s dead but the fact is a mouse could nibble an elephant).

Then why can’t the sun rise in the west and the stars rearrange themselves? With the rate at which we’re going, nature is bound to change its course sooner or later.  And if that could happen why can’t the clock strike thirteen or why can’t a circle have corners? That’s just our creation anyways. 

Now for my poem

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I saw the stars in the sky

Shining brightly from afar

I saw them here, I saw them there

And then at times, I found them nowhere

 

Is there a reason, why they’re there-

I wondered, up above the world so high?

Millions looking down

Sparkling diamonds on a Prussian-blue, satin gown

 

Is there one for every man that walks the earth

I muse – some in clusters, some alone?

Scattered like dandelions in the wind

Keeping their vigil, while we lay pinned.

 

I gazed enraptured at the twinkling beauties

And as I watched, they aligned – hundreds, in many straight lines

As if in respect to the erstwhile moon

Is still a mystery to me how they managed so soon.

 

The secret of the Universe revealed to me

That night the stars aligned –

                                                           For ME.

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