NaPoWriMo fall down go boom

Congratulations to all those who are closing in on that NaPoWriMo finish line! For myself, I've had to admit defeat -- just too much else going on. But I did end up with 21 drafty poems, definitely more than I usually come up with in a month; and it's not out of the question that I might come up with one or two more before May 1st. If I weren't frantically preparing to go out of town, I'd probably still try to make it to thirty over the weekend. Oh well.

I'll be gone for a week or so helping my mom recuperate from hip-replacement surgery, which she is having on Tuesday. I won't be entirely offline, but I probably won't be around as much as usual.

Here's an older poem for you:


Apart

The dying-battery beep reminds me
that we can't talk like this forever.

It's the things we can't help--
the lock that freezes three times every winter,

clocks that spring
forward, dinner burnt, pages

drifting to the floor--
that keep us apart.

I'm always driving west at sunset:
gold slipping nearer the horizon,

the flare of blindness on my windshield,
everywhere I turn, so much unexpected light.

--A.H.
published in Bloom: Celebrating Life in Bloomington, April/May 2007