An owl knows that twilight is the best time,
when the essence of clove hides in the mind
until we eat a slice of the best apple pie.
But you can’t be elusive forever: you can hide
around corners, behind curtains and fingers,
in the shadows of dreams, but your scent lingers.
Fog creeps into cracks in our lives, a discovered ghost,
it is no longer, it gave up the ghost, and when an acorn
falls, part of the oak tree disappears with it.
Walks on the beach are stolen moments,
as mercurial as the sea air in our lungs,
belonging to the breath that sings it, a song
is a pinch of salt, a message from Neptune,
and seaweed is magic petrified in brine.
Kim M. Russell, 2nd April 2023
Image by Fer Nando on Unsplash
It’s a good job Day 2 of NaPoWriMo falls on a Sunday as the prompt at napowrimo.net is a tricky one. It’s inspired by the Romanian-born poet Paul Celan, who once wrote a series of surrealist questions and answers, for example:
What is forgetting?
An unripe apple stabbed by a spear.
What is a tear?
A scale awaiting a weight.
Our challenge is to pick 5-10 words from a given list, and then write out a question for each selected word. For each question, we should write a one-line answer, trying to make the answer an image, and not worrying about strict logic. After writing out the series of questions and answers, we should place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page and write a poem of just the answers. The words I chose are highlighted in italics.
writing in north norfolk 
Seaweed is magic petrified in brine! That is going to linger. Lovely flow to your poem today!
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Thank you kindly!
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Yes, we did choose many of the same words. I especially like that last image too. It’s perfect!
I don’t know if it makes me funny, but your poem makes perfect sense to me 🙂
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Not funny, just like-minded!
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🙂
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Love the images you created, Kim!
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thanks Punam!
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You are welcome.
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I like the salty Neptune Messaging System and LOVE the petrified magic seaweed. Great stuff, K. Thanks.
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I delighted you like it, Ron!
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I love how all of your answers sound just right to be told to curious faeries. Thank you for sharing the poem, I enjoyed reading!
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Thank you for being a curious faerie and leaving a lovely comment!
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Fascinating, Kim.❤️🙏🏼
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Thank you Melissa!
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Aww. Splendid. The imagery is so real. I can taste it. So it’s real. Thank you, Kim. XoXo
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Thank you, Selma! I enjoyed the prompt. xoxo
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Mine look like more than one sentence but no, they are one long sentence divided into several lines. I enjoyed for the prompt even though I had a small time, after midnight to compile. I like your mind’s results.
..
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Thanks Jim!
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love the imagery of your poem, specially, “a song is a pinch of salt”!
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Thank you so much!
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