An Experiment

Over at The Writer's Alchemy (my active blog), I'm posting a poem by a different poet every day this month. My plan is to use the poems as inspiration, and possibly as actual models, and so to write -- er -- draft a poem each day. I don't expect more than to simply wake up a dormant muscle, to see the world through poetry again.

So, in the spirit of One Bad Poem, here's one of my experiments. It corresponds to the Tomas Transtromer poem, "Slow Music," posted on April 6.

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Beyond a garden of blossoming plum trees,
the cathedral's wide steps beckon. Narthex and nave,
a burden of old pews, a baptismal font ringed

by stained glass, sunlight blessing Jesus
blessing the children. Sometimes, out of nowhere
I recall standing as a child at the ocean,


digging my toes in, unable to hold my place on the earth,
tide tugging the sand from under me,
a pane of frothing water washing my bare feet.