Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’ve had a wonderful day feasting and celebrating with your friends and family. As you can see, I’m a bit behind with the Poem-a-Day Challenge. The poems are getting shorter (and somewhat sillier) as we go along, so I hope you enjoy at least one of them! Check back this weekend as Book Fifty becomes Christmas HQ for book lovers everywhere.

Day 13: City

We moved West, and settled.
We packed mud into molds,
and baked our bricks
in the heat of a younger sun.

The earth was ours,
and it cried out to us
in a voice we recognized
because it was our own.

We built, with bricks for stone
and slime for mortar,
a tower that rose beyond
our own understanding.

With just one tongue among us,
we made for ourselves a name,
but not the one we wanted.

Day 14: Traditional Form (Sonnet)

This is the autumn of a thousand birds.
I see them floating and drifting above
in eddies and swirls too graceful for words,
like falling leaves caught up in a rush of
wind that stirs the heart, or the memory.
They’re just birds, but they fill the evening sky
with their abundance, rising from wires we
drive under each day. I never ask why
they are there. I have grown used to seeing
them, a flight so common that I take for
granted this breathtaking fact: existing
in any form is miraculous. More
encircles us, we only know in part.
Above our heads beat multitudes of hearts.

**Sonnet in rhyme scheme and syllable count only. The meter isn’t perfect!

Day 15: Stranger ___

Stranger Things: A Haiku

You know, that new show
everyone’s talking about?
I haven’t seen it.

Day 16: Poem to the World

And God said,
“Let there be light,”
and it came springing
and bounding into the world,
a holy poem
written in wavelengths.

Day 17: What I Meant to Say

Catherine to Heathcliff

If only you’d stuck around,
you’d have heard me say
those famous lines
that populate tote bags
and note cards
and Instagram posts.

If only you’d stuck around,
we might have saved ourselves,
and our children,
and lots of high school students
a lot of time.

Day 18: Good for Nothing

I’ve stopped asking waiters
to hold the tomatoes,
because it’s easier to slide
the red slices off the bun
and leave them on the side
of the plate than to add
one more sentence
to my order.
Is it wasteful to sacrifice
a tomato or two
to save time?

Day 19: Abundance

Is there anything better
than lingering
over coffee
and watching
the cloudless sky
change colors?