#VerseLove April 17 – Why Do You Write Poems with Andy Schoenborn

Andy Schoenborn of Michigan is our host today for Day 17 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems about why we write poems in certain times. You can read his full prompt here and the poems of others. I’m sharing mine on my blog today.

Why Do You Write Poems When The World Is Asleep, (Even the Sun Has Not Risen), And There is Death All Around?

because over on the kitchen counter, a Jericho Flower has come back to life in my late mother’s pristine white milk glass, taking water into its dry, brittle brown fingers, slowly unfurling for the world and me to see that even in death, there is faith and hope and love - and life.  Leave it to my daughter to send me a Resurrection Plant for Easter - it’s the most perfect Easter gift EVER, Mom, wait ‘til you see! - and when the plastic envelope with four baby tumbleweeds arrived in my mailbox, I wondered - WTH?? (yes, even wondered it with Easter and all), so I Googled and discovered it was a Resurrection plant ~
Thank you, dear, I can’t wait to plant it!  A perfect Easter gift indeed! ~ to which she promptly replied: Mom. You don’t plant it. You put it in a bowl of water and sit back and before your very eyes it will come to life.  No dirt….. ~ 
and so I packed these dead quadruplets in the camper thinking with the purple martin house assembly and this tumbleweed show, our picnic table by the lake would hold more fun than Disney World.  I just had no idea how spectacular, how moving, how positively enchanting it would be to watch.  I poured water on one in a clear plastic tub. Sat back in my camp chair, feet on the picnic table bench, Cherry Coke Zero in one hand, dry salted peanut shells in the other, waiting. This thing came to life, from a mail order twig to a beautiful green floof of a plant that now graces my kitchen.  And I felt the nudge from Mom to put it in her milk glass bowl, the one I used to use for bananas that was sitting empty with no life and now holds the promise of her presence even in death, along with my daughter’s amazing tumbleweed thinking, in my kitchen, holding three generations of women who know a little bit about what it means to regenerate, to unfurl brown, brittle fingers into green again. 

Because stories need to be told.  That’s why I write poems when the world is asleep, the sun is not yet up, and there is death all around.