Lightbulb Moment (playing with the long and short of it)

Hello, dear community!

I am currently in Oregon, researching and writing a historical fiction novel. (At least I hope that’s what I’m doing; I scheduled this post to go out before leaving town.) I’m still planning to send you two poems per week while I’m away, but I don’t know yet whether my engagement in the comments thread will be as robust as usual. You all don’t need me to carry the torch, though! So much magic happens in those conversations—and that’s thanks to you. I look forward to seeing what unfolds in my relative absence. And now, a poem for you . . .

Lightbulb Moment

I’d never noticed the shining tips at the
edge of a vulture’s wings,
never seen a hawk join their circling,
then tilt its belly to the sun
so its breast glows white
like a lightbulb in
the gathering dark—
a beacon just for me.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

The Prompt

One thing you might notice about the poem above is that it’s short, at least compared to anything else I’ve shared with you. I’m not known for brevity or succinctness. I like words, I like to talk, I like to write, and hey, more is better, isn’t it? It felt a little edgy for me to keep this poem brief and bite-sized, but growing (as a poet or as anything else) is all about exploring edges. So here’s a prompt to play with . . . notice if there’s a length that feels most comfortable to you as a poet. Do your poems tend to be short? About a page long? Many pages long? If you can identify a pattern, then play around with breaking it. If you usually write pretty long poems, challenge yourself to write a short one. You might even set a line limit for yourself in advance and see what emerges from the gentle pressure of that constraint. If you usually write a single-stanza poem then throw your pencil down in relief, then try staying with the pencil, staying with the page, and see if you can search out another stanza. As always, I look forward to reading whatever you come up with!