napowrimo - April 1

OK - I have pledged to write a poem to a given prompt every day for the month of April. The first prompt this morning was to "shuffle" one's iPod and use the first five titles intact in the poem, no matter what comes up.

Rather than a shuffle (I have an iPod Touch) I touched a spot blindly in the index and asked for a Genius Playlist. These were the first five titles: Oh Deed I Do, On an Island, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Fisherman’s Blues, Pale Blue Eyes


Got the Blues Tonight

The night is cold,
a pale blue moon
hangs in the bare branches
of the elm tree
outside my back door,
and here comes the ghost
of Tom Joad sitting
on an island of blue mist
drifting over my snowy
field of stubbled corn stalks.
He’s strummin’ his guitar
and singin’ fisherman’s blues
about whales ablowin’,
specks of cold blue sea spray
glisten in his pale blue eyes
and I think that’s pretty odd
for a man from Oklahoma,
Oh, deed I do.

Wanda McCollar