Last night, I had the pleasure of participating in a Favorite Poem Project reading at my university.  I have many favorite poems, but this time I chose to read Audre Lorde’s “Coal”, because of how powerfully it spoke to me when I encountered it as a very young woman in a Contemporary Women’s Literature course in my undergraduate years. Reading it aloud to the audience, I realized the poem speaks to me even now–though in a slightly different way, altered by life experience.

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My poem for Day 9 seems to evoke Han Dynasty style poetry.

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Warm Spring Night

I was not drinking wine
alone on the porch
I was accompanied by clouds
two species of frogs
toads whose squeaking chorused
sex and risk–
also the silent predators
awaiting the amphibian
awakening
hungry after winter
among this vast assembly
I had least to gain
and least to lose
I savored the taste
of my situation
under the near-new moon.

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