MagPo Road Trip

Because April is National Poetry Month, I'm going to do my best to feature some poems on the blog. For a start, this one, "Highway Love," grew out of an afternoon stop while we were on our Spring Break Road Trip along the Pacific coast.

Before we left, I'd bought myself a new set of Magnetic Poetry, this time with words about the famous Route 66. Even though I knew we weren't planning to get that far south, it seemed to be a good batch of words to try out on a road trip.

When I opened the kit and saw all those still-in-blocks words, I also discovered that I had a problem. I couldn't find a stretch of metal big enough to accommodate all of my potentially poetic words. The only spot inside that was magnet-friendly metal was an eensy niche on the side of the stove hood fan. Nearly every other surface in the RV was wood or some facsimile.

Even the metal sides of the vehicle must be mainly aluminum, as nothing wanted to stick.

But at last, I was saved by the shining expanse of the front bumper. I spread out the set of words across the entire front width of the truck and, using my little metal clipboard as a notepad, started to work.

The poem I came up with will probably ride around with us for the next while or so, or at least until I can come up with something better.  

One of the challenges you might want to take up this month is NaPoWriMo. As the abbreviated words suggest, the site is dedicated to April also being National Poetry Writing Month. Daily prompts will help nudge you toward the goal of a poem every day. What's to lose? Nothing but your writer's block.