VSM Challenge
April is National Letter Writing Month. Its also National Poetry Month. Its also the month that tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service. And its the month that Spring is full on here in Brooklyn. Thank you perky daffodils, tulips, and Callery Pear tree blossoms. You have arrived just in the nick of time.
I don’t know who makes up these dedicated months and I wish letter writing and poetry didn’t need their own month to remain relevant. But enough grumpiness. My Viva Snail Mail challenge to you is to write a letter to someone and include a poem about spring or taxes or both. You can find poems about spring at poetry.org, an excellent website from the Academy of American Poets. Thank you to Tina Cane for that bit of information. Her poem, Butterfly Catcher, is included in the list. My google search for poems about taxes brought up a few rants so you’re on your own to find one or write one on that subject.
And here’s a little perspective to hopefully serve as a motivator. If paper and pen and envelope and stamp feel like work compared to email, here is a letter written and carved by an Ancient Egyptian on a clay tablet.
April 9th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Dang. That’s all I have to say to that tablet!
I’ll attempt some poetry this month but man do I suck at it. It’s cool if the poetry is really bad, right?
April 9th, 2010 at 11:37 am
becky, bad poetry is sometimes the best kind. go for it. and consider writing up a little something about “going postal” for me to post on VSM!
April 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
That is one heavy letter!
April 12th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
i betcha wendell berry has some nice spring poems. i’m taking you up on the challenge.
April 12th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
here’s one now!
POEM
The Thought of Something Else
by Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1.
A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity—another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.
Another place!
it’s enough to grieve me—
that old dream of going,
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.
2.
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going
3.
—a place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought
—see the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.