NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 14th): Late Summer, Backyard

From NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Fourteen: Today we are two full weeks into National/Global Poetry Writing Month. Hopefully you’ll all have fourteen poems under your belts by the end of the day and, if not – no worries! You can always catch up (or just cut yourself some slack).

Today’s featured participant is Glenn Mitchell, who really hit it out of the park with his take on Day Thirteen’s Donald Justic-inspired prompt!

Our featured resource for the day is the online gallery of the Rijksmuseum, where you may particularly enjoy their series on 100 masterpieces within the museum’ s collection. And here’s a little anecdote about how browsing an online collection of this kind can lead you to new and startling discoveries. While taking a peek at the museum’s exhibit regarding Meissen porcelain, I came across this slide show about a particular porcelain macaw, which in turn led me down the rabbit hole of learning about saxon elector and Polish king Augustus the Strong, who “died at the honorable age of sixty-two, his kingdom a financial ruin, with nine children from six different women, and a collection of thirty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight pieces of porcelain.” I feel much less sheepish about my comparatively modest trove of knick-knacks and doo-dads after reading that.

And with that silliness out of the way, today’s (optional) prompt is inspired by a poem that’s an old favorite of mine, by Kay Ryan.

Crustacean Island

There could be an island paradise
where crustaceans prevail.
Click, click, go the lobsters
with their china mitts and
articulated tails.
It would not be sad like whales
with their immense and patient sieving
and the sobering modesty
of their general way of living.
It would be an island blessed
with only cold-blooded residents
and no human angle.
It would echo with a thousand castanets
and no flamencos.

Ryan’s poem invites us to imagine the “music” of a place without people in it. So today, try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like “angle” and “flamenco”) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!

Happy writing! 

Late Summer, Backyard

The hose gives out a sigh
before the water coughs —
a kind of stalling laugh
from the throat of the tap.

Tomato vines slump like overworked dancers,
green shoulders specked with blush.
The bees are tipsy —
not drunk, just full
of late light and sugar,
looping wide,
then wider still,
then forgetting what they came for.

Somewhere in the grass,
a cricket tries a new idea
for a song.
It’s not good —
but no one tells him.

Leaves don’t rustle here,
they settle —
like a crowd leaning in
to hear the punchline.

The air’s got weight now,
holding onto every sound
like it might be the last one:
the soft tick of a sprinkler,
a grape splitting under its own want,
a wasp bouncing off the porch light,
again,
and again.

A swing moves without anyone.
Not much, just enough
to remind the chain what it used to hold.

Even the shadows seem tired,
dragging behind fence posts
like dogs not ready to go home.

There’s a hush in the rosemary,
like someone once whispered your name
and the stems never forgot.

Sometimes it feels like the garden remembers you
from before you ever came.
Not what you did — just the shape you made 
moving through its light.  

This garden doesn’t speak,
but it knows things.
Like how to keep going
after the fun is over.
Like how to hum
without a tune.

Then she calls your name from the kitchen —
a voice that breaks the hush like a twig underfoot.
She’s holding a dish towel, waving absently,
not knowing what you were hearing just then.

“Tea’s ready,” she says,
and it’s not a big thing.
But it’s enough to remind you —
someone's waiting, lights are on, the day’s not quite done.

You wipe your hands.
You go.

- Oizys.

[A note, since many appreciated the past notes that accompanied the poems: This is the beginning of the heinous summer on my side of the world right now, but I’ve always thought the rough, humid days and nights are worth enduring because of the late summer. For me, late summer holds a special kind of sadness. It’s momentary. Not because it’s ending, but because it’s the moment when everything knows it’s about to shift.

In the late afternoon, just before evening, I would go outside to water the plants (a habit that’s stopped due to changes in life and household). The cool water from the hose cuts through the heat, soaking the dry ground, or the coolness of the water soothing the dry soil of the plants. For a moment, I feel like I’m slowing down time. And I always feel like I’m keeping something alive in those moments. Not just the plants, but a kind of slowness that belongs only to late summer. The stillness before the world shifts again.

Though I’ve spent more time in “late summer, terrace” and “late summer, balcony,” the backyard gave me more scope to explore the natural phenomena. There’s something personal about the way the garden or backyard during late summer stays with me, as if it’s remembered me for longer than I’ve remembered it.

Once the moment is over, someone calls you back inside, and from a quiet that doesn’t belong to anyone but the earth, it turns into something simple and human. But that doesn’t make the quiet any less precious.]