Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent! (In the Western churches, that is!)
Now begins the season of penance — of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.
This Lent, I’m doing a few personal penances, including a fast from Facebook (so you won’t see me there, except perhaps for a Sunday post-share). On top of the penance, however, I decided to add a project. Namely —
Forty days, forty poems.
For each of the 40 days of Lent, I’ll write a poem and post it to Wattpad. Could be free verse, could be blank verse, could be rhymed or as strict as a sonnet, but each poem will have a Lenten theme. (I actually stole this idea from M. R. Graham, a super-cool writer friend who writes paranormal and mystery … as well as Lenten poetry.)
Here is my rather unprofessional Wattpad cover (the photo’s not stock!):
Two poems are up already. The first, “Memento Mori,” was posted a little early. It came about as I was experimenting with rhyme and meter, borrowing the scheme from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I translated in December:
Memento Mori
You thought of tendrils
Curling at dawn:
Stalks green and tender,
Lilies like swans.
I thought of churchyards
Dark in the rain:
Stones white as bone-shards,
Chanted refrains.
Always we’re dwelling
On ends, you and I:
For me, it’s a felling,
For you, it is life.
In the second, I forewent rhyme and focused on meter. And rather than use a traditional meter, like iambic pentameter, I based it on a single sentence: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. That’s what the priest says on Ash Wednesday, as he thumbs ashes on your forehead.
I cut “remember” and changed it to a first-person point of view, and the meter of the rest of the poem grew from there:
Ashes
I’m dust —
to dust I shall return.
I’m none —
no one can make me more-than.
But you,
you make from dust a bone,
and then —
from bones you make a body
alive,
awake and flaming-bright.
If you’d like to keep up with this 40-day project, go on over to Wattpad, register for an account, and add me to your library! (My username is @RandiAnderson.)
And if you’re a poet — or poem appreciator — why not try the challenge yourself? Post the link to your work in the comments, if you decide to join in and publish. 🙂
