Write a Poem Every Wednesday

I attended a wonderful poetry retreat this past January led by poet Molly Fisk and also joined one of her supportive and stimulating online poetry boot camps. Now every Wednesday I wake up and write a poem and email it to my poetry buddy, fellow children’s book writer Clara Gillow Clark. I write about everything from the satisfaction of eating an entire ten-page bag of spice drop candies, to my experiences at Weight Watchers (which I joined after eating that ten-pound page of candies), to my love affair with e-mail, to my son’s junior prom night.

Here’s my poem for this Wednesday:


Waiting for a Book Idea


It will either be haunting and evocative
and maybe take place somewhere else
and long ago, or it will be a hilarious
chapter book, preferably the first
in a successful series, maybe about
a girl, or maybe about a boy, or
maybe about a girl and a boy.
It would be good if they had a pet.
If haunting and evocative, I’ve
always thought “The Day Before April”
is a good title. Though the other day
I heard a little boy say that there
are “hundreds of Emilys” in his class
at school, and “Hundreds of Emilys”
is a good title, too. I could write
a book about the lost continent
of Atlantis, or about the school
for orphan girls that Vivaldi ran
in Venice, or about sixth-grade boys
who have their own pretty awful rock
band. The pet could be a goldfish.
Or a rabbit. Or a dog missing a leg.

I sit and wait. I sit and wait.