National Poetry Month 2018
I didn’t post yesterday. I needed a day off. The week was long, and my well was dry. I took the day for myself. I started with a much needed yoga class. I’d been away from this practice for too long. I had lunch with my daughter and son-in-law, then ventured over to an art show, The Big Easel. There I saturated myself with art and art talk. After the art show, I had a luxurious massage. I feel a twinge of guilt about this indulgence, but my monthly massages keep me healthy and pain free.
When I arrived back home, I watched hummingbirds at the feeder and other birds around the bayou and just chilled out. My notebook was nearby, so I did write a poem. I was comforted in knowing the muse hadn’t left. I just needed to fill the well back up.
Quilt painting by T. Chase Nelson
One of the artists I talked with painted the painting I am featuring today for ekphrastic poetry, T. Chase Nelson. When I first saw the painting, I thought it was a quilt. He explained to me that his inspiration was the quilts of Gee’s Bend. I am familiar with these quilts through a fellow poet-blogger Irene Latham who wrote Leaving Gee’s Bend.
For my poem, I took a line from Elisabeth Ellington’s Poem “Where do you Come From?” She wrote that each line of her poem was the translated name of a real place. I responded that each line sounded like the title of a poem, so I took one to begin my poem and used it as a title first line.
Land Beside the Silvery River
where Nettie sews pieces
together like a life
of patchy soil, a garden with
a shady oak and a rope swing
for the grandchillen’ coming
for supper.Across the river, life
rolls onto a highway.
But in Gee’s Bend,
an inlet of fertile soil,
life slows to the rhythm
of the silvery river.–Margaret Simon (c) 2018
Reflections on the Teche 