Transmissions from the Northern Outpost

For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

Waking A Stranger 

Touching something like that is like waking a stranger 
says the archaeologist this morning on the radio 
when asked what it's like excavating 
Native American remains in a nearby county.
Driving to work, I think I know what she means:
it's like catching the fleeting glance in the rearview
of the person behind you that you don't know,
but that you think you do for a moment.
Or like when a painter is applying the brush 
to the canvas and something begins to take shape,
but he doesn't know what yet. Or like the circles
a pen makes when a writer is doodling, a knot 
of lines overlapping lines that form 
a hurricane whose eye he cannot see out of.

The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape modes on your browser of choice.

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign” by Dunya Mikhail on The Poetry Foundation website.

Today’s post is also part of The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz. If visiting from The Sunday Salon or otherwise, please scroll back on the blog for more poetry each day this month.