It’s National Poetry Writing Month!

We’re going a little off-topic today, considering this isn’t strictly about literature… but it’s with good reason, because NaPoWriMo is upon us! April is always one of my favourite months, because it’s the one in which I and many others challenge ourselves to write a poem a day for the whole month. It can be tricky and occasionally disheartening but mostly I find that I have a lot of fun and sometimes even write a poem I’m really proud of 😀

I’ll be posting as many poems as I can over on my little poetry blog, Lag Weer, and you’re welcome to follow along there, but I thought I’d share Day 1 as a Monday Mumble. (Maybe, if I write any book-themed poems this month, I’ll share ’em here again 😉 ) If you want to take part, the official NaPoWriMo website is super – they share prompts every day as well as a whole bunch of resources. Aaaaand now, without further ado, my first poem of 2019 (inspired in part by Ada Limón’s Instructions On Not Giving Up and DH Lawrence’s Shadows):

Unfurling

How to start?

Well, first: take your heart;
hold it close and listen hard.

There’s a part there
that wants to unfold
the way a flower does:
pulling back,
opening up and out,
facing the world.

And I know
it’s hard to unfurl
the fist of your heart:
uncurling clenched hurts,
letting light in
where it hasn’t been,
letting love touch
what it hasn’t seen
for months, for years.

Tenderness can ache like a tooth,
blazing through you like a burn,
can bite like a bulldozer,
digging up every word you’ve heard
called against you, every spurn;
it’s hard, and it hurts.
It feels safer in the dirt…

But it’s worth it when it works.

So: begin to let light in.
Start, again, to let pain go.
Remember that this is a season:
there is a reason
your heart wants to open.
There will be a time, again,
when petals wilt and you’ll find
yourself drooping, down
in the dirt of the hurt.
From that time will come
new blossoms and blooms, renewal;
this is a constant cycle.

For now:
Learn.
Return.
Unfurl.