Bank Holidays, Dead Snakes and Disney Magic

As some of you will know already, I’ve decided to take up the NaPoWriMo challenge: 30 poems in 30 days. I’ve also set up a blog specifically for this purpose, and convinced a few of the other Dead Good Poets to get involved. Our efforts throughout the month can be found here. If you’d like to get involved there is still time – just leave me a message below and I’ll add you to the list.

Self-promotion? Check.

This week’s theme is ‘Showers’, and I decided to treat it like a writing exercise; an ideas generator, given that I need another twenty-eight poems in the next twenty-eight days and my ideas stock is running a little low.

Here are three short pieces connected with ‘showers’.

I

I like showers. I like forgetting to take an umbrella. I like putting on wellies. I like those warm, careful showers that drop as quietly as feathers. I like splashing in puddles. I like those echoing circles when a droplet of rain hits liquid. I like it when a strand of my hair gets so wet that it sticks to the side of my face. I like looking at the sky. I like it when a single raindrop slides down my nose because, for some reason, it always makes me think of A Sound of Music. Because it takes me back to bank holidays. Sunny days. Lazy days. Not at school days. Back to a moment when I had the time and youth to have clichéd days: picnic / village fete / seaside / donkey ride / zoo trips / park life / ice cream / or freckeled stream.

II

I like showers, but

we don’t have one.

Just this thing

that attaches to

the taps, and lies like a dead

rubber snake when the

water is turned off.

III

I think I saw one once. It was like carelessly handled jump leads; a burst of metallic squiggles. It was like white glow embers in a campfire. It was like Disney magic.

It was on a night when I was cold. It was on a night without thick jumpers and knitted scarves. It was on a night when I looked to the sky. It was on a night when I asked for answers.

I think I saw one once. High up, above the silhouette of branches, shooting beyond my fingertips, and trailing the contents of a glitter pot.  

Thank you for reading,
Lara.