I receive The Writer’s Almanac in my mailbox each morning. I must confess that while I unsubbed from the daily scripture e-mail before M was born and still haven’t resubbed, I never miss the daily poem from the Writer’s Alamanac. It’s the only *daily* devotional reading I do.

Right now I’m sitting in a Panera, having taken the afternoon off after attending a workshop sponsored by my presbytery team this morning around the issue of self-care. There were no earth-shattering insights by the presenter, just a very gracious presence that inspires one to slow down and live “at a savoring pace,” as he put it.

In her book A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver recommends copying the styles of different poets as practice, just as art students sketch the masters. So, just for practice, here are two poems I wrote this afternoon in the style of two poets from the Writer’s Almanac.

This one was inspired by the poem from September 18:

Morning News in the City
We are less safe than we were before the war,
unless it turns out that we’re more safe,
and the truth is in a report striped with magic marker.
An ambulance shrieks for several piercing minutes,
then exits as cars pull over in submission, or reverence.
The radio warns about the pileup right as I enter it,
I am jigsawed in, and I make silence with a click.
A stray butterfly casts about for nectar in a concrete meadow
of two-ton belching flowers. Rolls of white fat pad the sky
and I turn into the wooded driveway, trees in fall’s first blanch.
Inside, I say hello to the woman with the short downy hair,
courtesy of chemo, I discovered yesterday when I
complimented her. She has sliced the donuts in half,
stacked the half-moons into neat piles, laid them out
like hope on a plate as we wait for the hunched shoulders to arrive.

And this one was inspired by the poem from September 19 (scroll down the page):

Pop

Mommy music, she calls it,
preferring Elmo or Raffi,
Then resigning herself to a throaty duet

Between her mother and Bono.
A song for their fathers,
You’re the reason the opera is in me
or the poetry.

Their voices soared, though one
drove kids to day care, the other
wooed stadiums and Republicans.

But then the baby grew restless with
all this overproduced angst, and it was back to
A jingly jangly Billy Jonas.