Steve McAllister's Blog

Lovely Lace began a poem prompt using fruit as the topic.  She honors me in starting the prompt based on my poem “Plums.”  So, here’s my response to the prompt:

THE LAST PEAR

The last pear in the walnut bowl turned soft,
its skin the color of an elm leaf in fall,
its aroma seeping out and filling the room,
dampness spreads on the wood beneath.

I jotted these two poems down this morning.  It snowed here a bit and it gave me a little inspiration.  I’ll likely do a little cleanup on them either tonight or this weekend.

SNOW GLOBE

My breath fogs the glass
And I wonder if snow globes
Are made inside out.

EARLY MORNING DOG WALK AFTER A SNOW

If it weren’t for the dancing dog,
I’d have been reluctant to do it. 
Step onto a clean, unspoiled surface,
perfectly even, as though someone
had sifted bleached flour from a great height
hiding the imperfections.   

Each step I took broke the surface.
It groaned and creaked under my weight
and left an ugly remnant of my passing,
a reminder that despite my upbringing
about the world being made for man,
I could quickly spoil pure beauty.

I listened to a recording of William Carlos Williams reading his poem To A Poor Old Woman.  I had first heard the poem read by John Lithgow.  It was lovely.  When I heard William Carlos Williams read it with what I thought was a thick New Jersey accent, I was a little surprised by it.  It lost some of the quality of sound that I’d heard with Lithgow.  It was a bit of a dichotomy that prompted the following:

PLUMS

What is it about a plum that’s so poetic?
Why does a bowl of plums on the table
or in the icebox sound so perfect?
Is it their deep, dark skin
wrapped around a flesh the color
of a lover’s cheeks rouged with passion?
Is it that they’re sweet and juicy
causing you to lurch when biting one
to prevent the sticky nectar from dribbling
down your chin spotting your blue blouse?
Is it that this particular combination of letters
rolls off the tongue in such a way
as to remind you of a musical phrase
that caught your ear in Dona Nobis Pacem?
William Carlos Williams was seduced
by something in the word ‘plum’.
What was it he saw?

It snowed!
It snowed!

Find the handmade mittens
and pin them to your sleeves.
Your old rubber galoshes,
the ones with silver buckles,
are drying by the furnace.
The threadbare stocking cap
is stuffed down the sleeve
of your wool winter coat.
Get the cocoa ready.
You’ll want marshmallows too.

It snowed!
It snowed!
And like all good things,
it won’t last long.

Here’s a poem I wrote this morning after hearing, then seeing geese while I was out walking the dog.

GEESE ON A FOGGY WINTER MORN
The sound startles me.
The mist rising off
cold manicured yards
and damp concrete streets
into the too warm air
muffles and absorbs sounds.
But there it is again
and I crane my neck
like a young lad
on a cold harbor pier
peering through the mist
for the ship whose horn
pierced the nothingness.
Then I hear wind in wings
and look up to see
dark ghosts pass in the mist
their wings hardly moving
soon enveloped leaving only
unseen swirls in the fog
until, once again,
their mournful cry
forces me to look again
for fleeting specters.

I’m tired of looking at this for different ways to say things.  The hard part with poetry is that you can declare it done in one instant and then see a word or phrase that looks like it could be said better.  So, it’s done for now . . .  (You’ll have to excuse me.  For some reason, WordPress is removing the carriage returns separating stanzas, so until I figure it out I’m having to add a dash.  It’s not part of the poem.  It’s the only way I know to force WordPress to allow empty lines.)

SNOW GLOBE

He groans when he sees it
knowing how it will snarl traffic
while his son stands on his bed,
arms propped on the window sill,
breath steaming a globe on the glass,
watching the flower bed disappear.

He shovels the covered driveway
ever on the verge of a coronary
as his son shoves around the yard
the expanding girth of a snowball
that will make up the tubby torso
of his creation, his bestest friend.
After work, he parks at the hill’s base
and slowly trudges up the steep grade.
Nearly half-way up, his son passes
dragging the old, worn Flexible Flyer
shouting at a whooshing streak of blue
amidst a blurred blizzard of snow.

At the top, his son waits and asks
if he wants to give the hill a try.
He shakes his head without smiling.
After all, he’s wearing his good suit
and putting his leather briefcase
in the snow would certainly ruin it.

When his family has gone to bed he sees
the moon emerge from dark clouds
revealing a sparkling navy and white land
as if plucked from the snow globe
he’d shaken at his grandma’s house
so many years ago.  Oh, so long ago.

In the half moon-light of his son’s room
he gently brushes the boy’s back
and they rise to look out the window
leaving two globes of moist breath
before padding to the utility room
to don coats, gloves, pants and galoshes.

Here’s what I did to the poem that started as an paragraph. You’ll see that I broke it up into 6 line stanzas. It seemed to just fall into it, a single idea fitting into each stanza. I started looking at whether I should create a rhyming scheme. My initial thought was to make only the last two lines of each stanza rhyme, but I didn’t like what I had to do to the story to make the rhymes work. I also spent some time messing with the length of the lines. Initially, the first 3 stanzas were all about the same rhythm and length while the last 2 departed from the rhythm and length altogether. So I did some cutting and rewording to get them all about the same. That’s what I did tonight. The next step is to go back and read it out loud and make changes where they sound like they need to be made. I may even tape myself reading it so I can focus on hearing it.

He groans when he sees it

knowing how it will snarl traffic

while his son stands on his bed,

arms propped on the window sill,

breath steaming a globe on the glass,

watching the flower bed disappear.

 -

He shovels the covered driveway

ever on the verge of a heart attack

and his son shoves around the yard

the ever-growing girth of a snowball

that will make up the tubby torso

of his creation, his bestest friend.

 -

Later, he parks at the foot of the hill

unable to make the steep grade.

He trudges up the hill and his son

passes dragging his sled, shouting

at a streak of blue going down

amidst a blurred blizzard of snow.

 -

His son waits at the top, and asks

if he wants to give the hill a try.

He shakes his head without smiling.  

After all, he has good clothes on

and if he put his leather briefcase

in the snow it would be ruined.

 -

When his family has gone to bed

the moon emerges from dark clouds

revealing a sparkling navy and white

land as if plucked from the snow globe

he’d shaken at his grandma’s house

oh so many, many years ago.  Ago.

 -

In the darkness of his son’s room

he gently brushes his son’s back

and they both look out the window

leaving two globes of moist breath

before padding to the utility room

to don coats, gloves, pants and galoshes.

Most times when I start a poem, I dive right into it drafting the line length and stanza breaks on the first draft.  On rare occasion though, I sketch out the idea of the poem before actually building it, line and stanza.  This is one of those occasions.  The paragraph below is the poem idea I just built for another in the winter series.  I thought it might be interesting for you to see how this evolves into the final poem or the poem I stop working on.  The way I think I’ll proceed now is to read the lines out-loud and insert some carriage returns where it sounds like they naturally fall.  The next step would be to make the language more “poetic.”  That will likely screw up the line breaks and I’ll end up having to go back and readjust those.  At each step of the way, I’ll try to send you updates so you can see how things develop (within reason of course).  I thought it might be interesting and maybe you can give me some suggestions on how to make it work better.

He groans when he sees the snow knowing how bad the traffic will be while in the next room the son stands on his bed, his arms on the window sill, his breath steaming the window and watches as the flower garden slowly disappears; he shovels the driveway on the verge of a heart attack while his son shoves around an ever-growing snowball that will make up the torso of his new best friend; later, he parks at the bottom of the hill unable to make the grade to his house and as he trudges up the hill his son passes him dragging his sled, stopping only long enough to holler at his friend, a streak of dark descending the hill amidst a blur of snow.  At the top, his son asks him if he wants to try and he shakes his head.  He has good clothes on after all and he can’t put his leather briefcase in the snow.  But when his wife and son has gone to bed he looks out the picture window as a full moon emerges from behind a cloud revealing a sparkling navy, grey and white landscape drawn from a snow globe like one he’d shook at his grandmothers many years before.  That’s when he sneaks into his son’s room and gently wakes him to both look out the window leaving two globes of breath marks before quietly pulling on coats, gloves, pants and galoshes.