Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations.20

Map of San Antonio, Texas
(Image is in the Public Domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

For the third Saturday in a row, I am not at home, enjoying the leisure and luxury that is sometimes known as Saturday. 

I am in San Antonio, Texas at the International Reading Association conference. As I'm out and about today, I'll be thinking about San Antonio's past, the river that runs through it, and maybe those flat, dry plains that spread to the horizon from its edges. Maybe today's image is about the known and the unknown. So many possible directions to go with your writing, when you've got a map in mind.

winding ribbon of water

fed by natural springs

lined by hundred year-old cypress trees

polka-dotted by restaurant umbrellas

serenaded by mariachi bands

cruised by tour boats

beloved heart of San Antonio

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

From Linda (TeacherDance):

In My Mind’s Eye
This older map
of straight lines
hides the crooked stories
of the past:
in the houses
down the street,
next door,
across the way,
in the alley,
catty-cornered,
in the park,
third floor,
a street away,
at the second stop sign,
along the river,
just out of town.

I just need to look
and imagine.

© Linda Baie, 2013

From Kevin (Kevin's Meandering Mind):

Heading left,
I turn right;
North then south,
then easterly towards the wildest west,
until the present fades from view
into the past,
sepia-toned and yellowed with age.
The color drains
out of experience
as I dig deep into the stories
sunk down deep into the grids
of time.

©Kevin Hodgson, 2013


From Cathy (Merely Day by Day):

the river
ever moving
meanders
surrounded by trees
watching
listening to the stories
that envelop it
for centuries
it babbles
gurgles
yet keeps many secrets
the river
ever moving
yet eternally entrapped
within this bed

©Cathy Mere, 2013

From Carol (Carol's Corner):

"Travelling"

long before the sun
climbs over the horizon

we travel eastward
across the plains of Colorado
past the cornfields of
Nebraska and Iowa
over the wide brown Mississippi
into Illinois.

The map,
once a precisely
fractioned pamphlet
becomes an unwieldy mass
as it is recreased
refolded
then reopened

my stubby seven-year-old finger
wonderingly
traces our route
amazed that
I have journeyed this
so far into this
big wide world.

(C) Carol Wilcox, 2013

The theme of my 2013 National Poetry Month Project is 

"Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations." 

Each day in April, I will feature media from the Wikimedia Commons ("a database of 16,565,065 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute") along with bits and pieces of my brainstorming and both unfinished and finished poems.

I will be using the media to inspire my poetry, but I am going to invite my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings...anything!

You are invited to join the fun, too! Leave a link to your creation in the comments and I'll add it to that day's post. I'll add pictures of my students' work throughout the month as well.