So, it is National Poetry Writing Month, and many people are talking about writing a poem a day for the month of April. I did something similar back in Lent 2015, so I figure I’ll give it a shot this April.

I decided to participate a few days into April, but I already had my first poems underway. I wrote The Incomplete Garden in response to a prompt from a poetry group I’m part of.

The view from your favorite or least favorite window.

I started the poem on the first and edited it on the second, sending it to the group, since had to miss the get together.

On the second, I drove up to and unconference in Western Mass. I had been listening to some podcasts on creativity and in one of them there was a suggestion to the effect of “look for three things that you don’t see every day on your way to work”. This idea was the starting point for Road Poem 1. As I drove, I noted things along the way and remembered others and wove them into a pieces of a poem which I recorded on my cell phone as I was driving. The next morning I edited the pieces together.

I hesitated about naming it Road Poem 1, because that implies that there should be a Road Poem 2. I will be keeping my eyes open for subsequent road poems. We’ll see.

It was around the time that I was editing Road Poem 1, that I looked out the window described in The Incomplete Garden, and I saw the April Snow which I started working on Sunday morning and edited and posted Monday morning.

On my way to work on Monday, I was listening to a poetry podcast, and the podcast is what made me think of The China Tea Cup. Like with Road Poem 1, I composed the first draft in my mind, then recorded it on my cellphone. In the evening I edited and posted it.