NaPoWriMo #1

It's Bad Poetry Month! Thirty poems in thirty days is the aim, a slightly crazy one since I have to fit it in round full time work, meals, dishes, ironing and all the other stuff.

Still, last time I did this, in amongst the totally forgettable poems were a handful that surprised me, that made it all worthwhile.

The folks over at ReadWritePoem are offering a prompt for each day of the month. Since we are almost twentyfour hours ahead of the USA here in New Zealand, April 1st was almost over before their first prompt went up. So I have used one of their other prompts from earlier in the week - I may declare April to be a 31 day month so that I can use all of their thirty prompts.

Here, brought to you by the words mingle and multitudinous is my first rough effort. (No, the words don't actually appear in the poem. They helped to inspire it, just the same).

Escher at the Salmon Ponds

Above the salmon ponds a multitude of swallows dart
in jagged tessellations. They dive and swerve in pursuit
of invisible insects. Beneath them, a river of fish
flows from one end of the pond to the other.
As fish leap at the instant of turning, birds swoop
to meet them. Boundaries dissolve. He feels himself
melt into their seamless motion. For a moment
he becomes bird, becomes fish, then reaches
into his pocket for a pencil stub, a scrap of paper
to capture the vision before it fades.