NaPoWriMo 2026 [4th April]
Day Four
Hello, all, and welcome back for Day Four of Na/GloPoWriMo.
Our featured participant for today is W.B.J. Williams, whose response to Day Three’s prompt is a good reminder that jobs aren’t always like they’re made out to be on tv.
Today’s resource is an oldie-but-a-goodie, the Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Check back each day for a new poem, or subscribe and the poem will show up in your inbox each morning!
Finally, here’s today’s optional prompt. In his poem, “Spring Thunder,” Mark van Doren brings us a short, haunting evocation of weather and the change in seasons. Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.
Happy writing!
-
What the Wind Keeps
The days arrive in sheets of white,
a fixed, unblinking kind of light.
The air stands still, as if it keeps
a record no one ever reads.
By evening, wind begins to move,
not kind, just careful in its proof.
It cools the skin, but leaves a trace
of heat that does not leave its place.
The gusts bring dust, and something burned,
fine ash from what was never learned.
It stings the throat, it clouds the sky,
it settles where the questions lie.
I face the wind. It does not pass.
It finds the mouth, it fills the lungs.
What travels far does not arrive—
it stays, and names what we survive.
Not all of it belongs to me,
but still, it will not let me be.
~ Oizys.