This blog is devoted to a select group of poets. We're starting with poets from the Ann Arbor area, but, hey, if you're from Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw or the Upper Peninsula, then that is okay, too.
Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
You may need to have a Gmail account to post in the comments section. Most of you do have Gmail, but for those of you that don't it's extremely worthwhile to open up one now! That way you've got a chance to get your work out there in the world.
Korczak's Rock
ReplyDeleteWe drove move than sixty hours
Not all in one day,
we stopped several times
to sleep
or to eat at Casey's
or Mama's
or wherever the locals ate.
There was no rush
The mountains had been there forever
Sacred space long before we decided to go
Sacred space long before the Six Grandfathers
became the four presidents
It was as inspiring as I'd read
the project had been going on since 1948
(or 1929 if you ask Henry the Elder)
we had no idea about the plans
for the campus
for the medical training center
for the length and depth of the vision
I met a woman there
in the visitor center
she was making beaded crafts
We talked about where to buy beads
and about art
and about selling crafts
We did not talk about religion
or ancestors
or history
I told her I sometimes felt guilty
making designs from tiny beads
after seeing all of the
moccasins
and pouches
and necklaces
in the museum
She gave me that same look
I'd seen a thousand times
when I asked other questions like that
A few hours before we got there
I'd been talking with three women
They were sitting at the roadside
near the cemetery at Wounded Knee
selling handmade crafts
A man came by in a van
He was selling materials
they didn't need anything
so he kept driving
I hadn't asked them any questions
they didn't look like they wanted to talk
they were busy making more things
Thunderhead Mountain listened
to me not talking
Somewhere in the back of my mind
I wondered this:
if less of his horse was still
buried deep in that rock,
would he ride over
and ask me why I only talked
to the woman who was indoors?
- Mike Fedel
May, 2013