an acrostic
The Artist’s Inner Dialogue
Today is a
Happy day
I feel it as I
Skip along the sidewalk
I feel like making
Something beautiful with
All kinds of colors
Red orange yellow green blue
And my favorites,
Indigo and violet…
Now I leave my happy beautifulness
By way of chalkdust
Or maybe fairydust
Where you can find it, too
Photo: Margaret Simon. “This Photo Wants to be a Poem,” Reflections on the Teche.
Thank you for the inspiration, Margaret.
with thanks to Margaret Simon who hosted Day Six of #verselove at Ethical ELA, inviting participants to write poems inspired by photos, around the them “A World Trying to Deal.” She included links to commemorative photographs taken during the pandemic shutdown.
I found my inspiration here: 2020 Photos: The Year in the COVID-19 Pandemic (WBUR News). If you scroll, you can find the sidewalk chalk drawing in the play area of an apartment building. Toys lie abandoned beside this chalked message in a child’s handwriting: “the end of the world.”
Here’s my poem, on Day Seven of National Poetry Month.
the end of the world
blacktop oracle
scrawled in chalk
draped with a lifeless jump rope
attended by an ownerless bike
chalk left lying behind
the end of the world
is how it felt, Children
one year later
let us return
and prophesy
on how we can color it
new
Photo: Debra Sweet. CC BY
lit bits and pieces 