Chapter One

 I am leafing through a new novel by Icelandic writer

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir searching for a chapter title

to use for my poem.

Choose a chapter title from a favourite book 

is today’s poetry prompt.

I’ve looked through all my favourite books for chapter titles,

but they all use numbers.

My favourite book is ‘The Tree’ by John Fowles 

and Frank Horvat, but it has no chapters,

only photographs of trees.

This won’t do.

It’s the same with every book I pick up.

Chapters are numbered.

There is no poetry in that.

I go back to ‘Miss Iceland’

(my friend Jen sent me on her birthday last November).

I thought of you the whole time I was reading this, she wrote.

Graceful...this winning tale of friendship and self-fulfillment...

is sprawled across the cover banner.

I read the book and searched for myself, 

and recognized our friendship in its story.

The protagonist is a single girl; a writer who lives with a poet

in Iceland. And works as a serving girl in a coffee shop.

It is 1963.

I recognize the isolation of her existence, in a land

of snow and volcanoes (I live in Canada).

And I like her writing style.

And her chapter titles are good.

Any one of them could be a poem.

We are all the same; fatally wounded and disoriented whales

I get up from writing this, and look out the window

at the birds waiting for seeds in my yard.

A golden-crowned sparrow, a crow, and a jay.

Then I come back to write this poem.

The birds will have to wait.

I’m ten days behind in the April poetry challenge.

Am I a poet?

Poets are men

is the title of the first chapter of Ólafsdóttir’s book.

I’ll go with that. The birds are waiting. I close the book.

It’s a cold windy day.

The white cherry blossom petals are falling like snow; 

I notice as I scatter the wild bird seed.

And I wonder if the sparrows have driven off the chickadees;

not seen them for days.

And what to do about the one-eyed crow

who reminds me strangely of the hero

from ‘The Phantom of the Opera’.

Is this a poem?