Because we talked to something we didn't understand yesterday, it's time to speak to something a little less strange today.

Write a poem to your past or your past self. This can take the form of a letter or an ode - anything really. What would you like to say to you or your past? Are there any particular images which are reoccurring or have taken on special significance now that you have the lens of time to look through?

In a way, the poem which comes to us today has done that. Entitled "Old Botany", this poem by Mike Bayles takes us through a memory of the past in a scene in which he's touring a favorite place with a family member. Perhaps it will inspire you as well! Happy Writing!

Steve Biehler: Chilling Thoughts

Chemical change happens as we age,

making the hands fasten a wool collar

like an insulating blanket around the neck

keeping the north wind from chilling the body.

Hot blood surging thru conduits free of plaque

create a force-field of warmth to encompass

mind, body and soul for one more run

down the mountain, or around the rink.

Today, cold weather enjoyment is

pushing snow with a tractor blade,

while covered in satin lined fire hose

canvass clothing and Iditarod race boots.

Shoveling by hand is for hard surface

driveways and sidewalks to garages and

saved for son or daughter earning

money before or after school.

Bob-sledding down hills, backbone to belly

fashion, blinds all but the driver; he can't see,

blowing snow screens the slope bottom

like smoke bombs hiding soldiers advancing.

Sliding to a stop, the toboggan's cargo erupts

in laughter ready to drag the sleigh up the hill

for one more downhill flight before the sun

disappears below the Norway-pines at the top.

The rustic bar overlooked Great Sand Lake,

reflecting the full moon, its glass like surface

looking like a dance hall floor, ready for couples

gliding in exquisite parallel formation in

tempo based on music heard by the skaters.

Portable houses glow like tepees from fire within

as ice-fishermen look for perch or walleye

through an 8 inch hole augured thru the ice.

Becoming an inside person, the winter scene

is a welcome sight viewed outside the window,

sitting by a blazing fireplace, sipping Drambuie

straight up from a crystal old fashioned glass,

remembering the fun with kids in the snow.

Snowball fights, shaking the tree branches,

dumping snow on an unsuspecting sister

or cross-country skiing thru the bean field.

Pulling out boxes of decorations, wishing you

had put in one more electrical outlet under the

eaves to use with the white Christmas lights.

If the fire is a mnemonic, more so the trimming

of the outside brought inside to take on a

collection of individual memory pictures.

Hand painted glass balls, with yellow daisy

and leaf of muted green cover the surface.

We know the wind will not stop bringing

greetings from our neighbors to the north.

After all, they are only trying to share the

special time of year everyone holds so dear.

Every pew full of family; some even fearful,

they've not been there very often, maybe for

a funeral or a buddies kid being baptized.

Christmas Eve is special, the animals even talk.

It isn't aging that brings the cold, it's always

with us in the Midwest. Go South old man, go

South old woman; to Florida or Texas, or

Arizona, New Mexico anywhere the north wind

doesn't blow so cold and be warm in the sun.

Don't forget to come back in the spring when

the snow is gone, the Robins are in the yard, and

daffodils are bright and dandelions say hello.

Today's challenge will ask us to engage with the unknown.

Write a letter to "God" (or the Universe) - to something you feel has a degree of mystery and power around it. Take this time to ask it questions, speak your mind, yell or scream, or thank it for whatever you feel is worth any thanks.

Today's poem comes to us from Steve Biehler. Entitled Chilling Thoughts, the poem is a wonderful set of reflections about what winter means and brings to both the author and area in which he lives. Ironically appropriate for today's frosty morning this poem is.

MJ Sullivan: My Father Holds an Apple

My father holds an apple in his right hand

As if it were a curve ball soon to be

In flight to home plate at the Fenway

But he is standing in the backyard looking at his garden

Anchored by a birch tree cupping an oriole nest

Threaded with fine grass and strips of bark

From the post and rail. When he takes a bite

Under his newsboy cap, I can tell

He is chewing a mathematical equation

A prototype for a spaceship.

April 5th Prompt

Today will really but just a new twist on an old classic.

Write a love poem to someone or something. Begin with an image or simile or metaphor and allow the rest of the poem to explain what this image in the beginning means.

Michael Bennett: The Carpenter's Son Mourns His Death

This poem had me looking at things around me - those crafted perhaps with carpenter's hands - in a completely different light. I'm not sure I'll think of trees in the same way again, but I'm okay with that. This poem comes from Michael Bennett and is entitled The Carpenter's Son Mourns His Death

The Carpenter's Son Mourns His Death

The carpenter attempts to trim the world,

to make it fit the vision and the need,

to plane and sand and square and join, fit flush:

but now that fickle bubble rests no more

between the level's aribitrary lines.

Before his work could weary of itself

the joiner broke, the job left incomplete.

It is the scent of pinesap I recall,

and resin, too, and heated roofing tar:

those smells that take me back to childhood.

And once again I am in awe of him.

On summer days, my father's sleight-of-hand

created cavalries of wood and nails:

his common sawhorses that were meant

to hold in readiness the workday load

became for me imagination's fierce

and war-like steeds, blazed by chalk dust.

And I rode recklessly as if I were

a savage, on a mount of raw and naked pine.

His hammersong of steel sang out, and made

me thrill to sounds like hooves make striking flint.

He told me not to weep for trees, for they

with honor and with grace desire the axe:

Their sacrifice would shelter weaker things.

Our homes, our lives, are gravestones, epitaphs,

and legacies of oak and pine and beech.

The forest bore the weight of loss, and in

the end, those same trees must have wept for him.

He was a kind of artist I suspect,

his softwood hands knew skills that shaped my childhood.

He lived and died alike with calloused palms,

with fingers resin-streaked and splinter-filled.

This memory song is late in coming.

This challenge seems somewhat difficult as it asks us to look into our past while examining the present.

Write about something which you used to believe as a child. If you can, describe a specific instance in which you realized that this belief no longer held true. What did it feel like to realize that thing had changed? Is there an image you can compare this feeling to? As always, happy writing!