If you are like me, then the gray days of late winter/early spring, are hard enough, let alone having to be shut in because of Covid-19. It brings me to thinking about how to find inspirations in the mundane and the actions of others. And, as a writer, there is nothing more terrifying than the blank page. So, here’s a poetry prompt for you with steps:
Write the ordinary
- take a walk
- take a mental snap shop of someone/thing you encountered on your walk
- what’s different today vs what would be usual
- how can a reader get a picture in their head
- how does it make you feel?
I live in the Proctor neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington. This is my ‘poem of the ordinary’.
Proctor Prayer: Spring 2020
Alfred is standing outside, cooking pizza
in his wood fire stove on wheels. His
restaurant shuttered. I walk my sausage
sniffing dog past chef, he calls out a hearty
Hello darling, how are you? Smiles
are infectious. Safeway’s parking lot
is half-full. People circle the Met.
I buy a dozen roses, ashen damask, like my
mother’s old linen. Not exactly edible, but
food for my soul and continue walking.
MasonSchool’s soccer field is empty. Even
the dogs are inside. Terry’s Tavern is shuttered
but Garden Spear is wide open, an outside
business. It’s too early for geraniums
and too cold for basil but sweet peas
are starting. There is new life coming.
A friend just welcomed a new granddaughter.
Pink and blue hyacinths pepper my
garden. Deer are birthing fawns. Mother
Mary, may we all live to summer.
Josie Emmons Turner
Josie Emmons Turner 