9 April

Day 9 (2) 

Proper prompt: 'Concrete' poems

I was too lazy to complete one, yet, but decided instead to describe the ones I could have written

1. Daisy

The word 'yellow' in a large bold font, perhaps Arial. It sits horizontally. Around it at diagonal and perpendicular angles are at least 20 versions of the word 'white', in a smaller font. These mimic a daisy and to extend the metaphor even further, from the 'yellow' is a green line, extending down to a copy, and another and another until they fill the snowfield of your page, like a blueprint for a daisy chain. Ideal for Spring

2. Ancestry

And I reach back 4 generations or so, before the sheer probability of the Williams and the Mary Anns starts to weigh my tree down and I can't go further, there are too many variables, namesakes , doppelgangers, fakes.

Oh small people with vast, intricate lives but not much added to their record, save birth marriage death and taxes, live as though you were living for a future genealogist.

Mark that time in ink, in blood, leave footprints, or taking advice I never took.Name your children, unusually, stupidly, like stars or flowers or anything that shimmers, shines.

Alternative Instructions :

Take a template of a family tree
On every branch, write your own name
Since you are the sum and purpose
of all these parts

3. The Collateral

Take the map of Britain
with the concentration of deaths
marked in pale blue dots,
and if you have the time or knowledge, 
substitute for each ,
their first name or the name
by which they were known
to their best loved.