When we don't have direct experience to guide us, we have imagination as a bridge to the knowledge.  In the first poem, Susan Mitchell poetically imagines what she can't know first hand about the dead, mixing the ordinary with the fantastic.

​The Dead  
BY SUSAN MITCHELL

At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.

Poetic Image is not just visual but an activation of any of the five senses.

How Would You Live Then?
BY MARY OLIVER
 
What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
     flew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
     became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
     you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
     past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
     the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
     you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang
     from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver 
     of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
     and every day – who knows how, but they do it – were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

Source: https://workthoughts.com/2019/09/06/the-friday-poem-
how-would-you-live-then-by-mary-oliver/
 

Take one image from Oliver’s poem (or your own first one) and write a page (poem) about it, not limiting yourself to what you see and hear and smell directly anymore, but allowing the sensory input to spark other thoughts, memories, images, story, and emotional weight. Use your poetic imagination to bridge any gaps.
​
 OR Write a poem answering Oliver’s question, “What would you do if . . .?”
​

We have written summer and fall vignettes, and about walks in winter.  It is only fitting to address our current spring.  It has come.  Amidst everything, it is here. Can we hold the duality of -- what spring usually means for us with what is happening in the pandemic of 2020?

The following poem blends the mention of a spring season and a key life event. 

What happened in a Spring of your memory?  Hold Spring . . . and an event . . . in the same poem.  The event doesn’t have to be traumatic.  Maybe the event juxtaposes the season of Spring.  Maybe it vibes with the season.  Write for 10 minutes.

In the "Courage of Poetry" seminar 2020, David Whyte surmised that if you only suddenly noticed that everything has bloomed, then you have missed the seasonality of spring—the essence of spring. 

So the second poem prompt, switches gears into the archetype of spring.  Of course it's about other things, too -- I mean, isn’t all poetry about something and something else!  Two examples:

A Cold Spring
By Elizabeth Bishop

The violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay.

The next day
was much warmer.
Greenish-white dogwood infiltrated the wood,
each petal burned, apparently, by a cigarette-butt;
and the blurred redbud stood
beside it, motionless, but almost more
like movement than any placeable color.
Four deer practiced leaping over your fences.
The infant oak-leaves swung through the sober oak.
Song-sparrows were wound up for the summer,
and in the maple the complementary cardinal
cracked a whip, and the sleeper awoke,
stretching miles of green limbs from the south.
In his cap the lilacs whitened,
then one day they fell like snow.

Now, in the evening,
a new moon comes.
The hills grow softer. Tufts of long grass show
where each cow-flop lies.
The bull-frogs are sounding,
slack strings plucked by heavy thumbs.
Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies
begin to rise:
up, then down, then up again:
lit on the ascending flight,
drifting simultaneously to the same height,
–exactly like the bubbles in champagne.
–Later on they rise much higher.
And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.

Source:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1952/05/31/a-cold-spring-for-a-friend-in-maryland

The gentle slide from spring to summer while the structure of the poem moves through morning to evening. All of life is in flow, the poem is in flow, our hopes are in flow. 
Tell us about your spring topics in the comment section.  Include a few lines from your poem. Respond to Bishop's poem.  
​

Develop one of your “poetic subjects” into its own intensely imagined or intensely observed poem. What should we never “forget” about the subject?  Make this poem
an “antidote to the river of forgetting" via Lindenberg's poem.

Poetry Is a Sickness
BY ED BOK LEE
 
You write not what you want,
but what flaws flower from rust
 
You want to write about the universe,
how the stars are really tiny palpitating ancestor hearts
watching over us
 
and instead what you get on the page
is that car crash on Fourth and Broadway--
the wails of the girlfriend or widow,
her long lamentation so sensuous
in terrible harmony with sirens in the distance
 
Poetry is a sickness
 
You want to write about Adoration,
the glistening sweat on your honey's chest
in which you've tasted the sun's caress,
and instead what you get
is a poem about the first of four times
your mother and father split up
 
Want to write about the perfection of God
and end up with just another story
of a uniquely lonely childhood
 
If I had a dime for every happy poem I wrote
I'd be dead
 
Want to write about the war, oppression, injustice,
and look here, see, what got left behind
when all the sand and dust cleared
is the puke-green carpet in the Harbor Lights Salvation Army treatment center
A skinny Native girl no older than seventeen
braids the reddish hair
of her little four- or five-year-old Down's Syndrome daughter
 
Outside, no blinking stars
No holy kiss's approach
Only a vague antiseptic odor and Christian crest on the wall staring back at you
 
I didn't say all this to that dude who sent me his poems
from prison
 
You want everyone to feel empowered
Want them to believe there is beauty locked in amber
inside each of us, and you chip away at that shit
one word at a time
You stampede with verbs, nouns, and scalpel adjectives
Middle-finger your literalist boss
Blow grocery cash on library fines
Sprain your left knee loading pallets all day for Labor Ready
You live in an attic for nine years
You go bankrupt
You smoke too much
 
 
Drink too much
Alienate family and friends
Say yes, poetry is a sickness, but fuck it
Do it long enough, and I promise like an anti-superhero
your secret power will become loss
 
Loss like only old people must know
when the last red maple on the block goes
 
and the drizzle turns to snow
 
Maybe the best poem is always the one you shouldn't have written
 
The ghazal that bled your index finger
Or caused your sister to reject your calls for a year
The sonnet that made the woman you loved fear
That slam poem you're still paying for
The triolet that smiled to violate you
through both ears
 
But Poet, Sucker, Fool
It's your job
to find meaning in all this because
you are delusional enough to believe
that, yes, poetry is a sickness,
but somehow if you can just scrape together enough beauty and truth
 
to recall, yes, that Broadway car crash was fucked up,
but the way the rain fell to wash away the blood
not ten minutes after the ambulance left
was gorgeous
 
Or how maybe your mother and father would sometimes scream,
but also wrapped never-before-seen tropical
fruit for one another every Xmas Eve
 
How in the morning before opting out I watched
that tiny Native girl fumbling
to braid her own and her now-
snoring mother's long black hair
together
                   in a single cornrow--
 
If I can just always squiggle
down like this:
                                even half as much
as what I'd otherwise need
to forget
 
maybe these scales
really will one day tip
to find each flaw that made us
 
Exquisite
 

Source: poetryfoundation.org
​

Write a poem about your inner spirit.  Maybe you will make it concise in three stanzas, featuring three separate images. Or choose a form that more readily suits your spirit.  Write for 10 minutes. Ready, set, go!
​

​For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet
Joy Harjo
 
Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that
bottle of pop.
Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth
gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and
back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were
a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the
guardians who have known you before time, who will be
there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there
without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people
who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought
down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,
interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and
those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few
years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and
leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the
thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning
by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders,
your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your
ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our
direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take
many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or
ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and
creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return
in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and
given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who
loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no
place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way
through the dark.
​
Source: https://poets.org/poem/calling-spirit-back-wandering-earth-its-human-feet

For Prompt #2, PoetryBones writers
​recalled spirit in these places:  ​