Poem-a-day

Poem a Day

By Meg Petersen

Many poets challenge themselves during National Poetry Month to write a poem every day.  The official National Poetry Month is in April, and since in April, I barely have time to brush my teeth, I have decided that for me, June is National Poetry Month.  I have written a poem every day so far this month (5 more days to go).  This has served to make me more attentive to the small things each day that catch my attention.  It’s sometimes challenging and a few times, I got pretty close to midnight without a poem, but it helps to jumpstart my writing as I enter the institute and provides a record of my life during the month of June.  It also gives me plenty of material for future revision.

I will share with you a poem I wrote, as the title implies, right before we began the institute, my poem for day 23 of this month.  

At the Cusp of the Institute

Right now, it’s all possibility.

The frame is there, the careful structure we have built

over months, over years, but it is only that, a border

to contain what we cannot yet know.  All we need

is inside us.  We are this thing;

it is ours, and we are it, and we will remake it

in an image we know will be unique, but recognizable. 

All this we know, but for now,

it is only potential, until we set it all in motion,

so we poise like coiled springs, ready,

We know this much:  that it will test us,

that we will need to trust in processes we don’t fully

understand, that we will build the plane while flying,

and that the after will be different.

But this is the before.

So we take a moment to breathe,

to reflect on what we might want to remember

of this pregnant space and wonder just what this is

in us, yearning

to be born.