A new day, a new discovery—this seems to be the way that April goes for me.

The daily prompt for today was to write a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), the challenge was to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like. For example, if I chose a whale as the topic of your poem, I might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”

Well, I started the process describing climbing since Ev has recently taken to the sport of rock climbing. It started well and I wrote three nice quatrains that were ok but sort of sing songs and bland. The fourth quatrain turned the whole poem around and began a totally new stream of thought.

So, I abandoned the prompt (once again) and the poem took on a life of its own.

Mountain Climb

I have built a house 
on the middle of a mountain;
it is here I discover 
my desire for dance.

I love the rhythm of jumping 
boulder to boulder; I become 
my own secret Argentine tango—
forward, back, cross-step, turn.

Here I learn forward ascent is felt 
in the heart, not the feet;
and here that I realize
the summit was never the goal. 

The thick branches, sap running dry,
the unexpected violence of shifting stone—
the flesh of the mountain as it
mistakes me for an intruder

reminds me of the drapes of darkness.
But the glow of Venus before dawn
grants me a time to wonder,
what is the light for if not to illuminate?

I have built a house
in which I fear nothing and no one.
It is here where before I begin to die,
I learn to live.

—Carla Jeanne