Day Thirteen #Na/GloPoWriMo

Day 13 Prompt

To get started with today’s prompt, first read Walter de la Mare’s poem “A Song of Enchantment.” Then, John Berryman’s poem “Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood.” Both poems work very differently, yet leave you with a sense of the near-fantastical possibilities of the landscapes they describe. Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.

Happy writing!

Some of the lines and images in today's poem are borrowed from a work-in-progress piece about my trek in the North Eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in September 2025. 

spring arrives in the autumn of neem

 

Ajoh, my young Arunachali guide, proclaims,

“The forest will remember your footsteps,”

and places both her palms on dewy drops

cupped in moss

mossmossmosssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, everywhere

you behold

wave upon verdant wave

like a song on loop

hugging limbs, groins, armpits

thick girths, swinging canopies

of the rainforest trees—

too tall, too ancient, too majestic

to hold

in a single shot,

in a single lifetime

 

“We call them ancestors

and stop in prayer, whenever, wherever,” she says.

 

I follow her lead and sink my palms in the green,

greengreengreengreengreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen moss

drunk on dew, the moss springs up its spongy arms

and I’m held first, then

slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwly I sink

in pre-historic mystery, maybe even God—

my feebles, foibles, falsehoods absorbed 

in between the in-between

 

Afterwards, Ajoh and I will hug

at the edge of the forest

knee deep in muck, mud

and rest our bamboo sticks

against the breasts of this slice of this Himalayan ridge

 

If this were my end

I’d end

in peace

 

Alas!

Pray, pay heed

 

Not long after,

a stupid war will flourish

across the middle of our geography—

to finetune

our sonic sensibilities

we will know how to tell them apart:

missile from thunder,

thunder from drone,

drone from hoover, and

hoover from arrested heartbeat

 

While the doves, the bulbuls, the sparrows and the mynahs

in the patch of green that covers

the continent between our front door and garden wall

will flock in shock, all at once at am of thirty past three

and our tree of neem will beseech

its fleece of golden leaves

to not let go

just yet,

to not tremble like bells

in temples, churches, schools

From my window I will watch

our neem raise her arms to the heavens

in prayer

 

What religion, pray tell, is neem?

Arunachal

Ajoh