Poetry: Advent Of Joy

My National Writing Project friend, Deanna, has once again put forth a poetry-themed Advent calendar of prompts for poems in December. This is her sixth year (see all) of curating mentor poems on a theme, and then sharing out, and encouraging people to write poems. I seem to always come late to the party, but my aim is to use her 2025 Advent Of Joy collection each morning, to write poems, by borrowing a line from her poems and building off from there.

I caught up yesterday by blasting through a handful of poems. And then wrote a poem this morning, based on one by Langston Hughes.

Here is one from that first batch of poems that I liked:

Peace (and joy),
Kevin

Bird Poems

Junco

There were two days of one-word prompts that had bird themes. Yesterday, it was the junco bird and today, it was a cardinal. I had to learn more about the junco before I wrote that particular poem but the cardinal poem came as I thought about the red bird, and a red wheelbarrow came to mind, connecting to the famous poem by William Carlos Williams, which I then riffed off.

Red Cardinal

Peace (in flight),
Kevin

Poems: Frost

Etched

A theme of frost (winter’s coming) emerged from two poems this week. The first, above, is inspired by my friend, Algot (from a Sunday haiku poem exchange that he and I do) and the second is from this morning’s one-word prompt for haiku, with “frost” as the word.

Peace (etched inside),
Kevin

Poem: On Resonance Of Sound

On Resonance Of Sound

Last night, we lay dreaming
beneath the breath of the world,
an Aeolian Harp shimmering,
uneasy and unpredictable

between the silence, sounds
split within intake and exhale

— maybe we’re all just poems,
waiting to be written —

For when the winds bend in,
unbidden, from a horizon line
where the day’s kissed the night,
even though the heat resists,

the cool air danced by itself
along paper-thin strings strung
across an old wooden box
we’d left on the windowsill,

just for times like this;

We might even have heard
the harp’s song in tandem, leaning
in to listen together, our ears
touching with reverberations

and I remember you humming
a couplet, as I drew in a breath
where your words touched mine,
in rhyme: our voices, harmonized:

the best song yet

Peace (catching the wind),
Kevin