NaPoWriMo - April, 2025 - Poem: Safer Harbor

NaPoWriMo 2025

04/20/25 - Day 20 of 30

NaPoWriMo.net Article


NaPoWriMo Prompt

And now, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Below, you’ll find Theodore Roethke’s poem, “In Evening Air.”


In Evening Air

1

A dark theme keeps me here,
Though summer blazes in the vireo’s eye.
Who would be half possessed
By his own nakedness?
Waking’s my care–
I’ll make a broken music, or I’ll die.

2

Ye littles, lie more close!
Make me, O Lord, a last, a simple thing
Time cannot overwhelm.
Once I transcended time:
A bud broke to a rose,
And I rose from a last diminishing.

3

I look down the far light
And I behold the dark side of a tree
Far down a billowing plain,
And when I look again,
It’s lost upon the night–
Night I embrace, a dear proximity.

4

I stand by a low fire
Counting the wisps of flame, and I watch how
Light shifts upon the wall.
I bid stillness be still.
I see, in evening air,
How slowly dark comes down on what we do.


So, let’s face it: this poem is weird. The rhythm is odd, the rhymes are too, and the language is strangely prophetic and not at all “conversational.” Despite – or maybe because – of this, it has a hypnotic quality, as if it were all inevitable. Your challenge is, with this poem in mind, to write a poem informed by musical phrasing or melody, that employs some form of soundplay (rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration). One way to approach this is to think of a song you know and then basically write new lyrics that fit the original song’s rhythm/phrasing.

My Poem

Inspirational Song: "Colder weather" - Zac Brown Band

Safer Harbor

You gave plenty of yourself to reign my heart in.

Gave up your freedom in a time of bold religion.

I never had a chance to plant flowers in the garden

Of withered aspirations making you a gilded cage.

Your heart is finally beating again.

After many seasons later.

When you proclaim that we’ll get better

I sense your hesitance.

My heart is a broken bird,

Grounded by your subterfuge.

I’m flightless with no way to gauge

Migration to safe harbor.

So we dance a circle withering in silence.

Your touch is cruel as the promise of red violence.

And with my castigations falling on a cold, deaf mistress.

I pray for succor solely through your expurgated coyness.

Your heart is finally beating again.

After many seasons later.

When you proclaim that we’ll get better

I sense your hesitance.

My heart is a broken bird,

Grounded by your subterfuge.

I’m flightless with no way to gauge

Migration to safe harbor.