NaPoWriMo Day 28: Room within a room

Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April.  

For Day 28, the prompt was to write about a bedroom from your past. This one is part real, part imagination.

This is the prompt for the April 28 poem:

Today’s (optional) prompt is brought to us by the Emily Dickinson Museum. First, read this brief reminiscence of Emily Dickinson, written by her niece. And here is the prompt the museum suggests:

Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s cozy room, scented with hyacinths and a crackling stove, warmly recalls the setting decades later. Describe a bedroom from your past in a series of descriptive paragraphs or a poem. It could be your childhood room, your grandmother’s room, a college dormitory or another significant space from your life.

Room within a room

A room within a room,

Without a face.

A series of faint lines

Lightly charcoal-sketched,

Shaded with criss-crosses.

Curtains close out the sun,

Dust balls floating mid-air

Between labyrinthine books.

Papers stretching fingers

Peek in cobwebbed corners.

We listen out for life:

Crisp red heat of baking bread,

Heady sweet grace of tulips,

Straight-backed figurines

Who used to dance once.

Blankets hug the bedstead.

A whale swims on a towel,

Speech lost in a dead tongue.

Terracotta turtle stares, paws

Outstretched in aboriginal art.

 

It leans against a white wall,

Saying living demands colour.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 28, 2020