National Poetry Month: A Call to Tomorrow (7 of 30)

It's National Poetry Month. I will be posting a poem each day. No theme. I'm just going to follow the spark each day, wherever I might find it. It's bound to be messy. 

It's Poetry Friday - and National Poetry Month - so I'm trying to jump back into pressing publish on this blog each day this month. Each Friday, I hope to join the Poetry Friday Community, where I've been lurking quite often as they're always inspiring. Make sure you stop by Reflections on the Teche where Margaret Simon is kindly hosting today.

Today's poem was inspired by Major Jackson from The Slowdown Show. Each day, Jackson shares a poem on the podcast after sharing a short essay. I enjoy listening to the way poetry pushes us to think about life and the complexities of living. In Jackson's essay on the poem Future Me by Lena Moses-Schmitt, he asserts, "Occasionally, writing poetry is also an offering to the future: poem as a container of time, whose language signifies the era in which it was written."

I haven't been able to get this idea out of my head so today I decided to try a poem about this idea. 

A Call to Tomorrow

If poetry speaks

to the future,

what do we need

it to say?

Should it speak

of hope,

to promises of

better tomorrows?

Should it speak

of truth,

and tell of lessons

we still haven't learned?

If poetry speaks

to the future,

which words 

should we select?

Shouldn't every word

be weighed,

carefully selected 

for veracity?

Shouldn't words stack,

singing songs

of triumph

over our past mistakes?

If poetry speaks

to the future,

what do we want

it to say?

© Cathy L. Mere, 2023