{"id":7779,"date":"2018-10-03T01:00:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T08:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=7779"},"modified":"2018-10-02T12:46:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T19:46:35","slug":"a-letter-to-my-sister-during-drought-prompt-388","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/a-letter-to-my-sister-during-drought-prompt-388\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter to My Sister During Drought . . . Prompt #388"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s writing prompt is a poem. You can write on the theme or mood of the poem, a stanza, a line, or a word to inspire your writing. Just Write!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Letter to My Sister During Drought by Donna Emerson<\/p>\n

In this fourth year of drought,<\/p>\n

California trees begin to fall.<\/p>\n

Orchards of almonds lie<\/p>\n

on their sides near Fresno.<\/p>\n

Rows of apricot trees black, bent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Remember when we listened<\/p>\n

to Vivaldi\u2019s Four Seasons?<\/p>\n

Only one season here:<\/p>\n

red summer hum. Our cedars<\/p>\n

shrivel. We are ankle-deep<\/p>\n

in flat brown leaves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even my wrists are wrinkled.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard about your<\/p>\n

illnesses, which you said<\/p>\n

your guru would protect,<\/p>\n

though he died five years ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been fifteen years<\/p>\n

since Dad\u2019s memorial,<\/p>\n

twenty since mother\u2019s, when you<\/p>\n

changed your name,<\/p>\n

wrote your last letter<\/p>\n

\u201creleasing me from your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know you can\u2019t see the water<\/p>\n

from where you live, but I\u2019d<\/p>\n

settle for a silent sitting together<\/p>\n

on a bench beside our old pond.<\/p>\n

\u2014Previously published in The Place of Our Meeting<\/em>, Finishing Line Press.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Donna Emerson<\/h3>\n

Living in Petaluma, California with her husband and daughter, Donna recently retired from teaching at Santa Rosa Jr. College and from her clinical social work practice.<\/p>\n

Donna\u2019s recent publications include Calyx,<\/em> Sanskrit<\/em>, the Denver Quarterly<\/em>, The Paterson Literary Review, <\/em>the New Ohio Review, Weber: the Contemporary West,<\/em> and the London Magazine..<\/em> She has been nominated for a Pushcart, \u201cBest of the Net\u201d and received two Allen Ginsberg awards (2015, 2017).\u00a0 Her four chapbooks include This Water<\/em>, 2007, Body Rhymes,<\/em> 2009, Wild Mercy, 2011, and Following Hay,<\/em> 2013.<\/p>\n

Her first full-length poetry collection, The Place of Our Meeting <\/em>was\u00a0 published in January 2018 by Finishing Line Press. <\/em>She is currently completing her second full-length book, Beside the Well<\/em>, to be published by Cherry Grove Collections in December, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s writing prompt is a poem. You can write on the theme or mood of the poem, a stanza, a line, or a word to inspire your writing. Just Write!   A Letter to My Sister During Drought by Donna Emerson In this fourth year of drought, California trees begin to fall. Orchards of almonds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[1144],"class_list":["post-7779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prompts","tag-donna-emerson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-21t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7782,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779\/revisions\/7782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}