2 Poems

I had to write two poems for the prompt given for Day 4 on the NaPoWriMo website. This is what the prompt is, in essence:

Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

I began to think about the poem seriously at about 9 p.m. The thinking was interrupted by dinner. I watched something on OTT and did not notice the time pass 11.30 p.m.

I typed my poem on thinkdeli. Then a voice came in my head.

“You think what I do is not art?”

I did think he does on our walls is art. I don’t quite know how I deciphered my son’s baby language but I wrote the second poem. Also, on thinkdeli.

I had this photograph on phone’s lock screen and wall paper. I had kept this on the phone in the end of 2024. I thought this photograph was taken early in the morning.

I imagined, waking up among this forest scene early in the morning. A little later, I would have missed it. A little earlier, I would have missed it. But the photographer, Arati Kumar Rao stayed up and took this photograph.

I wanted this photograph to wake me up early. This is the art I describe having lived with.

The second poem is about my son waking me up in the morning. Not at the time I could take a similar photograph that lives on my phone’s screen, but earlier than I would naturally have.

I live with this artist, and his art is all around me. In the many places I look.