EARTHDAY:OVERHEARD « April Halprin Wayland – Children's Book Author & Poet

beginning the hard work of poem-making...

beginning the hard work of poem-making…

POEMWORK

by April Halprin Wayland

I thought I’d spy from nine-to-five

behind The Times in a café,

while folks conversed and drank their brew.

Or, lingering in a school hallway,

I’d lurk until a poem arrived—

I’d probably have to wait all day.

But I don’t have to work that hard

here, as the wind is slipping in,

as tortoise dawdles in the dew

with flowers hanging from his chin.

I simply listen in our yard.

The story behind the poem:

Last night the word, “overheard” came to me, and I thought it would be fun to sit in a coffee house and take down the words of people around me and fashion them into a poem. But I never got to the coffee house and anyway, I’ve actually tried this before and it was hard work and no poem came and I felt like a total failure.

So I stayed home and opened my window. As the words fell on my page, I played with a rhyming pattern that is a bit more complicated than I usually use: ABCBAB, repeated twice.
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It’s your turn. Go somewhere and listen to words. Or listen to the non-words around you. Stay open, even to the “ugly” sounds of traffic or lawn mowers. These may be poem fodder, too.

in our backyard...