That's one of the fun things about the smaller readings like the Green Leaf PLP day often is. With less people than the large shows, we can have more interactive discussion mixed in with the poetry, and keep it less formalized and rigid. If you get thirty or forty poets in to read, you have to be tight on time limits and just read on and on, with not much chance to break it up.
Not that the bigger readings aren't good or appreciated - they are. They are just a different thing altogether. It's like apples and pears. They're both sweet and come from trees, often with green skins, but they taste different. This is why I keep on truck...er, reading.
Toward the end of the afternoon, we were talking to Shannon Prahl, one of the two sisters that own the Green Leaf Coffee House, our kind and wonderful host. (Jillmarie is the other sister.)
They have a lovely pair of pictures up on the wall from when they were little girls. One is clearly from Summer, one from Fall. Russ and I decided to write a poem about each of the pictures. Russ is doing Summer, I am doing Fall. I took a phone-cam picture of the two large photos on the wall and e-mailed them home for the two of us to work with. Below is my effort. I'll post Russ's work here when he has it ready. (And after he e-mails it to me.)
Thanks for reading, and Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Dan
Green Leaf Gals Fall...
Steps and stairs,
A house number by heart,
Cool breath,
Miss you, puppy dog.
So long...
Leaves out of sight,
Never out of mind,
All about the yard,
Were in neat piles raked.
Sign of a season...
A cameo moment,
Camera-captured forever,
"Who, me?"
"Not I wags the dog."
A smile and whistle for such innocence...
Scattered gold and brown,
Wind-blown in their time,
Rustles and frost long faded,
Like clouds in the sky.
They remember the leaves even still.
AquarianM
By: Daniel A. Stafford - poem, Prahl family photo.
© 03/15/2008
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