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.

When I heard about a young cousin going into rehab, I wrote this free write, which turned into a poem. It was directed toward her at the time.

Reflecting On This Thing Called Life

Sometimes things get thrown away
like today when workers for our landlord
threw away a table that set in the foyer
of our apartment building for years, where
we who live here would gather around it,
sit, talk and b.s. about our landlord:
how this old eyesore of a house on the hill
is in the words of one of my housemates
“the white elephant he sees how many people
he can shove up its ass.”
It's like that sometimes and perhaps 
you know that better than any of us
now as you have been taken away to 
rehab for a drug problem no one in the family
suspected. What are we now supposed to say?

It is a rough world out there, 
and getting rougher every millisecond, 
the molecules are closing in on you 
before you know it, you'll be dead --
that is, unless you straighten up, fly right
into the sun, where everything will be burned
away. You say you can't see? Good...
Let's not talk about it, share, have an open
heart, open your hand and take this
pill, this panacea for your pain, what pain
is there in suburban life, but the pain we
all feel, the pain...

Listen, even in the silence the secondhand
keeps moving, the rat-a-tat of a keyboard, 
one hand clapping 
in the wind.

Where do we go from here?
Upward mobility is a fancy name for 
the dream we dream.
I can't promise you 
the cruelty of the world 
won't try to crush you.
To put it in perspective, 
at least 300 are feared
dead in a Moroccan earthquake,
there are larger headlines to be written
than cousin goes into rehab upstate,
to be sure,
but none so personal to me than to know
what the world needs now
is to see you in it
breathing
in
out
in 
out,
the clock can be your friend,
not your enemy.

Listen, even in the silence 
the secondhand keeps moving, 
the rat-a-tat of the keyboard 
keeps rat-a-tatting along

like some jazz song from
years gone by.
It makes no sense
what we do
but we continue:
to live.

It is what she continues to do as well. For today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day, I’m actually going to share two:

• “Hangman Poem: One Player Puzzle” by Anacaona Rocio Milagros on the Academy of American Poets website.
• “Sad Rollercoaster” by
  Jared Harél on Poetry Daily.

The above poems are best viewed in desktop and sometimes lansdcape on your browser of choice.

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.

Today’s poem from me is one I obviously had to post today:

Easter Morn

My grandfather rises from the grave
to embody the man in the pew in front of me.
It's the scent of Camels, Aqua Velva mixed,
the Confederate-grey blazer that doesn't fit,
the drop of sweat just beneath the ear
like when my grandfather played steel guitar,
or that keyboard my aunt and uncle gave him
the Christmas before he passed away.
It's how he reaches down, pats the head
of the little girl beside him and smiles,
how my grandfather tousled my sister's hair,
or how when he presses his hands together
to pray, his hands appear time-wrinkled
like my grandfather's. When he closes his eyes,
he looks so calm and peaceful.

Today’s poem from someone else is one I felt I had to share today: “Easter, 1916” by William Butler Yeats.

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.

My Grandpa Fields listened to the radio late at night. One of the things I remember most vividly when our family went to visit him in North Carolina, usually for Christmas, was him surfing through the channels on the radio dial. I remember listening to the radio along with him from the room where I stayed. Later in high school and college, I found myself surfing the radio dial late into the night.

Continuing Granddad's Legacy 

I surf the AM waves
nights after the Late Show, tune in/
tune out women radio shrinks, traffic 
reports, talk shows that use words like

"premature." I always leave one ear open
for the slap of leather against
backboards, sneakers on wooden floors,
the other for the Mutual Broadcasting Network

brings you Larry King Live, 
except come spring when both listen for 
the pennants to unfurl for the Yanks. 
Unrealistically I seek a voice as harsh 

as Ella's "Basin Street Blues," silky
as Sarah's "Always," understanding as
Dr. Joy Brown, or contradictory as Rush
on the FM. I will never find anything as foreign 

as the Cuban propaganda pirate stations, 
enticing as Texas radio there, as on the flip. 
Like Granddad, I am learning to appreciate
the Grand Ole Opry, yet also crave to hear

more "race" records, bebop, the Big Beat.
I am continuing his legacy in my own way,
trying to pick up some whisper of
sanity, some voice of reason to speak to me.

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “To the Tune of Qiu Bo Mei” by Lu You (translated from the Chinese by Shangyang Fang) on Poetry Daily.

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.

This poem is about my other grandfather, my mother’s father, my Grandpa Fields.

Emerald Isle

When Grandpa picked the dobro, he'd drift
back to when he and Uncle Thelbert dreamed
of making their debut at the Grand Ole Opry,
and forward to when he and Grandma could retire,
both move out to a beach house on Emerald Isle.
We'd cast our lines off the side of the pier
to catch blue fish and flounder, but once
he hired a guide take us out in his boat to trawl
the Bogue Banks for the larger king mackerel
he always wanted to reel in out on the pier's end, 
to test his line beyond its strength, 
see if it would hold.				

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “On Form” by Mia Ayumi Maholtra.

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.

My Grandpa Robinson, the one referred to in the poem yesterday, died on the day after my 10^th birthday. In this poem, I look back on that day.

June 10, 1979

Elmer and I are fishing the swimming hole
when my father calls from the bridge above,
"It's your grandpa," as if he was on the phone.
I arrive at the house, am escorted to the porch
by my uncles, who ask to see the birthday gift
I received the previous day, my first jackknife.
Opening it, I cut across the whorls of my thumb.
Inside, washing the wound, red lines the yellow
porcelain sink. Like blood from the first trout
we cleaned, skinned together in this same sink.
My thumb turns pale, the complexion he wears
lying in the room next to the kitchen. I sit now
in the recliner there, use that thumb on his diary,
discover only weather reports in his entries:
"warm, sunny, 70s today, wind at 8 mph
from the NNW, 29.08 on the barometer."

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Leaving the Psychologist: An Abecedarian Ekphrastic” by Griselda Y. Acosta.

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.

I grew up in a small village in northeastern Pennsylvania called Laddsburg. This poem is about its people, including my grandfather.

In The Little Village Where I Grew Up 

Around this corner Stu was unable
to straighten the wheel, avoid that pole, 
and in this very hayfield the tractor would not
stop from popping out of gear, rolling over L.J.
In the movies, bullets halt in mid-flight,
seconds before they reach flesh and bone,
but here, no one could stop the tractor trailer
from sliding down the icy hill, careening into Mike
and almost killing him. Here, migraines still pound,
nitroglycerin tablets still don't change Elmer
from what he always was, and is: a mean old cuss.
Here, the strop with which my uncle went to hit
my grandfather continues its descent toward him,
and my grandfather continues to stop it and walk
out the front door of the barn, never to return.

The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape modes.

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Sistas” by Sandra Maria Esteves on The Poetry Foundation website.