SLICE OF LIFE

So because I have nothing else to do this month, I've taken on a challenge.

Just a teeny little challenge.

A couple of days ago, I was corresponding with my good friend Mary Lee.

She's a teacher in Ohio.

She has two blogs. A Year of Reading. That blog inspired me to start a blog, seven years ago.

And Poetrepository, her new blog, where she features her original poetry.

And someday, pretty soon, she's going to be a famous poet. This year she had a poem published in National Geographic's Book of Poetry, and several other books too.

She's going to be very famous.

But she's also a terrific friend. I like her a lot.

Most of the time anyway.

Just not in April. Every April Mary Lee cons/cajoles/  persuades me to write poetry every day for a month, for National Poetry Month.

And it almost kills me.

Because I am not actually a poet.

I love, love, love to read poetry.

But it's really hard to write.

Unfortunately,  the thing is,  in my heart of hearts,  I would kind of like to be a poet.

And so every April, I join up with Mary Lee and Kevin over at Dogtrax and several other people and we write poetry. And at first it's really, really hard. And in the middle, when I am tired of balancing poetry and teaching and parenting and life it's even harder.

But at the end of the month, I'm usually kind of sad that it's over. Because I do a teeny bit like writing poetry and I really, really like all my poet friends and the community we create.

And every year I tell myself at the end of April that if I can write 30 poems in a month, I can definitely write one a week for Poetry Friday for the rest of the year.

But I never quite do it.

So the other day, Mary Lee and I were corresponding and I mentioned to her that I wished I was writing more poetry. And she had this idea.

She said that in the spirit of Bob Raczka's book, SANTA CLAUSES, she was going to try to write a haiku every day for a month. And somehow, it accidentally rolled out of my mouth that maybe I could do that too.

Haiku. Seventeen syllables a day. For 21 days. That's only um, about 500 syllables. How hard can that be? Right?

So I started writing. And then  I remembered, haiku is a teeny bit hard. It requires brevity. And precise language. And careful word choice. None of which are things that I am prone to. But we are going to try.  Mary Lee, I am sure, will actually succeed.

Me??? I'm going to try.  Here is my first one.

“December 1- Advent Calendar”

So many doors must 

Open before man in red
Makes an appearance.

(c) Carol Wilcox, 2015