National Poetry Month

Poem for the day.

FAVORITE PLACES TO WRITE

This could be a poem about windowed dens

that face the sea, or closets with doors

that dull midnight typewriter racket.

This could be a poem about a camper

parked at Shakori* or the public library

every Wednesday afternoon.

The first word written where and how:

on a cave wall with a fireblackened stick

or carved with a sharp instrument into a tree,

On scrolls of parchment with quilled ink,

recipes for India dye hazardous when

swallowed or pricked into the skin,

With thumb-tapping a virtual keyboard

on glass that looks just like a yellow pad

lined blue, the first few pages torn away.

Like turning away from a closing casket

this poem will be left behind, for the reader

slouched in a hammock or favorite chair.

Mary L. Barnard