Poem A Day For April 3 and April 4

Time got away from me before I could enter my poetic post from yesterday. But it was a good day, nonetheless, spent with our grandson's drumline at their final gathering of the season---the annual picnic. Those times don't come often and are their own reward. So, today's post includes the poems from both yesterday and today. And as it turns out, both seem quite a propos.

April 3: Our challenge for today was to "take the phrase "Partly (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make that the title of your poem, and then write the poem."

Partly Written
By Bill Kirk

Some days the best we can hope for as writers
Is work partly written.

Try as we might, the words don’t seem to flow.
Maybe the muse has left us
In search of more fertile fields.
Maybe the intrusion of life gets in the way.
Or are some days simply more or less creative?

Yet on those days, is it not better to make the attempt
Than let the time we would spend writing,
Silently slip away unused?
Too bad if that happens.

So, write on, even if the work ends up
Only partly written.


April 4: "... write a history poem. This could mean a poem about your country's history, the history of an event or a tool, or even your own personal history."

On Making History
By Bill Kirk

With each passing day,
In our own way,
We make history.

Each of us carves out some small or large
Piece of meaning in time and space.
What did you do today to mark you place?

Did you simply wake up for breakfast
And wait for bedtime?
Or did you experience
A different kind of awakening---
Learning or contributing
Some certain thing or idea
To give meaning to life,
Your own or others?

With each passing day,
How well will you choose
To use it?

For the day’s relative length grows shorter—
A day in the life of a five year old
Seems much longer than my days
Three generations hence.
Why is that?

Perhaps it is the proportional share
An apparently shrinking
Twenty-four hour clock takes out
Of the increasing span of one’s life.

Until its end, that is.

And then we will no longer make history
In the doing of things;
But only in the affect
We may have had on others,
Through what we have done or left undone.

Either way,
With each passing day,
We make history….