Down by the Moorings at the End of the Garden

I rise with the sun this morning.
Our cat is waiting at the back door.

I pull on my wellington boots,
unlock the door and let her out,

follow her across dew-soaked grass,
grown long, studded with forget-me-nots,

down to the back gate. She slips
though its slats while I stand and admire

boats bobbing ungainly on wind-kissed water,
ghosts in cloud-filtered morning light.

They creak and groan with the swell,
an other-worldly, tethered dance, tugging ropes taught,

clinking rigging, setting tarpaulin a-flutter,
eager to be among reeds, below trees, free on open water.

Kim M. Russell, 13^th April 2026

On Day 13 of NaPoWriMo we start by reading Walter de la Mare’s poem ‘A Song of Enchantment’ and then John Berryman’s poem ‘Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood’.  These poems work very differently yet leave us with a sense of the near-fantastical possibilities of the landscapes they describe.

Today we are writing poems about remembered, cherished landscapes, such as grandmother’s backyard, school playground or a tiny strip of woods near railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, we should include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.