What Sparked Your Poetic Heart?

Welcome to the first day of “Poems in April”, dear Toads. 30 prompts in 30 days, and I give you my oath that this is not an April Fools’ Day joke. In fact, today’s prompt covers a topic that is serious and fun and that tends to say with us: our poetic beginnings.

I found my spark while reading Memoirs, by Pablo Neruda, five years ago. The following words left me shaking (I know; a tad melodramatic, but histrionics should be allowed when the emotions are true):

“…it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend… I bow to them… I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down… I love words so much… The unexpected ones… The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop… Vowels I love… They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew… I run after certain words… They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem… I catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives… And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go… I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves… Everything exists in the word…” ~ Memoirs, by Pablo Neruda

I’ve used the cover of a Spanish edition because the English translation cuts the title down to just Memoirs. And I wanted to share the whole thing with you: I Confess that I Have Lived, Memories. So much is said in those words…

Your poetic mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write a new poem inspired by the first poem, poet or written work that sparked your poetry. Please make sure that your link goes directly to the poem, not your homepage. Visit other Toads and have a serious blast.