Last year, along with dear friend and collaborator Kathy Couch, I wrote a poem every day. It was an astonishing year of looking up, out and in, immersed in the daily endeavor of poetic attention we called How We Share the Sky.
Every day, for the entire year, we each took a picture of the sky, and then made space for words to come, inspired by, or in homage to, both the photo and the events of the day. If you're on Instagram, you can find the Skies at #howwesharethesky. You can also see them together, and take in the variety of serendipities and synchronicities, on the website we created in order to give them a side by side home.
When the project was finished, I felt the presence of the absence of the extreme nature of daily effort. The no matter what of it. The showing up to the blank page every single day. Without the practice, I felt somehow disoriented, confused. For a time, I could barely write anything at all. I've missed very much the rigor of the daily practice. And so, I pick it up again. This time, with a different lens.
Tomorrow begins the month long national celebration known as Poetry Month. As a way to celebrate, and also re-ignite my own practice, I am committing to write a poem every day in April. I'm calling the series "Ode to an Ordinary Moment." The idea is to tune my attention to the tiny, to the every day, to whatever's right under my nose. I'll post them here, but you can follow along as well on Instagram (#odetoanordinarymoment).
Happy Poetry Month!