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It’s April, and we all know what that means: NaPoWriMo!

It’s National Poetry Writing Month, and the well-versed souls at NaPoWriMo.net are once again supplying us with inspiration, motivation and creative prompts to help us in the challenge of writing a poem a day for the entire month of April. I always have the best intentions of meeting the challenge, but sometimes life happens. We’ll see how it goes this year.

For April 1:

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but they never said you can’t try to write a poem based on a book cover — and that’s your challenge for today! 

As a resource, we were sent to The Public Domain Review’s collection “The Art of Book Covers 1820-1914.”

I chose to use a cover to Jules Verne’s book From Earth to the Moon. My endeavor:

To the Moon

When first we breached primordial ooze, 
our lungs inflating from newfound air,
we turned skyward with clouded eyes, and
there it was:

a moon!

We grew a spine (well, some of us),
strengthened lengthening limbs,
climbed mountains and – 
finding our voice – we howled 

at the moon. 

Torsos stretched, gaining balance.
Minds stretched, gaining wherewithal.
Desires stirred beyond mere survival.
Straining upright, we reached yearningly to

touch the moon.

Stripped of innocence, we clothed our bodies.
Sloughing naivete, we cloaked our intentions.
Finding pride, we adorned our personhood.
Growing listless, we set a goal: we would walk

on the moon. 

Scarred and marred from our abuse, at a distance
Earth nonetheless appears a shiny bauble; a marble
expendable in our cosmic game, because we believe
if all else fails, we will simply move 

to the moon.