Poetry Friday, Week 22: Spark 48 with Margaret Simon

Today Margaret at Reflections on the Teche is hosting Poetry Friday.  And we are sharing collaborative posts.I decided to once again participate in SPARK, organized by Amy Souza. ( participated in SPARK 27 with an Inspiration piece and a Response piece).

If you are not familiar with this creative community, please check it out.  For times a year, writers, musicians, and visual artists are invited to participate in a 10-day project round.  As a participant
​you create a new work by using someone’s art, writing or music as inspiration.  And you have work with someone you know if you wish.  

I put the call out to the group of friends and Margaret responded. She sent me today’s poem and I created a mixed media response. I sent Margaret a photo from the California Redwoods and she wrote a poem for it.  She's sharing her response on her blog today.

This is the inspiration from Margaret:
Notes in a Locker
I forgot
    who she wanted to become.
    A note dropped into a locker
     scribbled in cursive,
     curly letters to sign her name.
I forgot
     who she was.
     When notes became soggy
     tissue floating in the river
      buried beneath the flood,
      we climbed out on Easter morning.
I forgot
      who she wanted to be.
      Her blonde Dorothy Hamill haircut
      flirted with the boys
       just wanting to be loved.
I become
     who she is
      daily walking from
      cocoon of sleep
       into full moon rising,
       
​      being fine
      being she
       being me.
 ©Margaret Simon

This was great fun. I will admit to some anxiety of getting it perfect. But I went with my heart and gut. The funny thing is that after reading Margaret’s poem, an image of a red locker came to me.  It surprised me upon re-reading her poem that while it said ‘locker’, the word red was nowhere in the poem. I noted these words in Margaret’s poem:
Locker
Note scribbled in cursive
Floating on the river
Dorothy Hamill haircut (those of us of a certain age had this haircut, “The Wedge”)
Full moon rising
Cocoon
My process for the mixed media was to create some painted papers. I have my great-grandfather’s letters from the Civil War, 1863 in cursive.  I printed them and added paint.  The red frame is from a gardening book. While I didn’t have a magazine photo of Dorothy Hamill, I was able to find an image and hide it in the painted papers. 

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Through the Red Locker: Bayou Moon

To see them on the SPARK website: 
Jone MacCulloch, Inspiration piece and How Do We Stand? By Margaret Simon,
Response
Notes in a Locker By Margaret Simon, Inspiration piece and Jone MacCulloch
SPARK 48 happens in August.  It’s a great way to play in art. This is something that I am trying to do more of since retirement.
Response