Poetry Prompt #65 - What Would You Say?

Is there someone you didn’t get a chance to speak with before he or she passed away? Have you ever thought about things you neglected to say when that person was alive? Who is that person? Imagine for a moment that you’re able to speak to him or to her. What would you say? What comfort would you find in one more communication? Think in terms of your relationship with the person and what that person meant to you. Think how you felt when the person passed away. Think about things that were left unsaid.

As you write this week, the object is not to dwell on sadness or regret but, rather, to work toward unique imagery and expression. Think of your poem as having two subjects. Poet Renée Ashley describes these as “the obvious one, its material, and the unarticulated one, its matter.” Don’t just tell about your feelings; evoke a feeling by showing, not telling. Your poem should have something to say, something honest and real, with a profound emotional center. It needs to "hit home" for the reader, and it needs to do that without being sentimental or ordinary.

1. Write a poem addressed to someone who is deceased.

Example:

Fists (For My Father)

By Joe Weil

It was the sense that your fists were worlds

and mine were not that caused me to worship you;

all those thick rope veins, and the deep inlaid grime of your life,

the permanent filth of your labors.

I wanted your history.

My own smoothness appalled me.

I wanted that hardness

of fists.

I'd pry your fingers loose,

using both my hands,

find stones, a robin's egg uncrushed

in the thick meat of your palms.

Between thumb and forefinger,

your flesh smelled of creosote and lye,

three packs of Chesterfield Kings.

You told me stories about heroes,

David with his sling,

Samson with his jaw bone of an ass,

Christ with his word forgive.

Tonight, I read about Cuchulain

contending with the sea,

how he killed his son in battle,

a son he'd never known,

and, mad with his grief,

fought the waves

for three nights and as many days,

until, at last, he came ashore,

and fell asleep holding his dead child's hands.

When he woke, it was morning, and the hands of his son

had become two Black Swans.

They flew West where all suffering ends.

I read this story

and I remember you.

Hold me clenched until I am those birds.

Sleep now,

until your fists can open.

(From Painting the Christmas Trees (Texas Review Press, Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.)

2. Address a poem to a specific group of deceased persons or to the deceased in general.

Examples:

"The Dead" by Susan Mitchell

"The Dead" by Billy Collins (Collins Reading/Animated Video)

"To the Dead" by Frank Bidart (Bidart Reading/Audio) 

3. Write a poem to or about a deceased pet.

By way of sharing, here’s a poem I wrote for my Yeats, my beloved Yorkshire Terrier:

Watching

By Adele Kenny

In Memory of Yeatsy

(January 5, 1993- July 6, 2008)

The way his head slips from     

my hand as I lay him down,

his eyes still open (though I

try to close them), the same

warmth still in his small body.

It is this: death, a skill learned

by those who observe it; grief

what we keep – and memory

always, at least in part, about

forgetting. I cross his paws the

way he crossed them in sleep.

Like all deaths that summer

remembers, I walk his home.

A patch of sun climbs the stairs

without him; white moths,

like snowflakes, span the sky. 

(From What Matters, Welcome Rain Publishers, Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved.)