The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PIPE

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are pipe, playground, prayers, recipes, ribbon, rice, road, saltwater, sandwich, school, sewing.

PIPE

My father smoked a pipe, and the occasional cigar. It always seemed a bit pretentious to me, and yet it's an image of him that I adore. I can still hear the click of his teeth on the pipe, the twinkle in his eye when he'd suck on the pipe... I've never cared much for tobacco smoke, but the scent of it does bring him instantly to mind, which is a very good thing indeed.

Here is a poem about Vincent van Gogh (who favored a pipe!) that might also be a little bit about Papa. Below you'll find a poem I wrote during 2018 ARTSPEAK: Harlem Renaissance that really is about my papa. And my next middle grade novel (coming 2021) features a pipe-smoking Papa, too.