National Poetry Month: April 6, 2015

NaPoWriMo Day 6: Today’s prompt springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells, but . . . today is Monday. So why not try a particularly Mondayish aubade…

Monday Aubade

Four of us to get to school, four bowls of cereal or scrambled eggs,

Mom from table to stove, from one need to the next.

Dad long gone, having drunk his coffee and climbed into his truck

driving off into pre-dawn darkness.

Monday when beds stripped of weekend lay empty,

school books gathered and sneakers lost, then found.

Dawn peered over the trees across the farm field,

birds chattered in the oak outside the kitchen window.

Four squabbles, milk spilled on the plastic tablecloth,

dog under our feet searching for scraps.

My mother’s face grim-set.

Soon the fat yellow bus would arrive for my brother and me,

soon my sisters would make their way to school down the street.

Soon the house would fall hushed except for clicking

of doggy nails across the kitchen floor.

Now I wonder what my mother did.

Would she sit and watch the day come awake,

just sit with coffee cup nested in her hands?

Completely still,  gazing out at her garden before she shook herself out

and cleared the plates to set in soapy water.