Daily driving homeward bound
Headlines through the traffic sound
Fragile ceasefire, body counts
Trillion warfare spending mounts
Where’s the mercy in this world?
In front of classmates shot a girl
Where’s mercy in this universe?
Easter death threats spew and curse
Keep on driving in your lane
While the world just goes insane
Front door opens, home at last
As far away the missiles blast
Yes, yes, yes!
She’s almost home,
I know by the angle of the sun under the table
I’ll try to lay here at his feet calmly, chin on my left paw
He pushes buttons on his laptop, rhythmic tap tap tap
Makes my tail want to hit the floor with a little thud, thud
Oooh I know she’s almost home
My ears twitch, perked for just the right sound of the gate rolling back
Squeak, clink
Ooo, thud, thud, thud, yes! She’s home
Vrrrr…car door clap, here she comes, thud, thud, thud
Patiently I let her drop her bags and shake the dust of her day off
As if she just retrieved a stick from some cool water,
Or perhaps murky water – depends on the day.
I’ll sit sweetly looking on with obedient eyes as she kisses him, exhales.
They exchange their words, taking turns
I watch intently, bodies, tone, inflection,
posture, expression
Finally her eyes turn to me
Thud thud thud thud
I hear her address me by name, yay! ME!
Her hands tousle the fur between my ears, ahhh…
And then she asks me my favorite rhetorical question,
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
YES! YES! YES! THUD THUD THUD
We don’t need a greenhouse
Don’t you know I get my magic from photosynthesis
I am living parenchyma
Thin walled and unspecialized
So when I get an idea it’s not a decree from the empress
Just a spark of light that I can’t help but burst into green
Perhaps spoken too soon without thought of the exact wording
I’m learning
We don’t need a greenhouse
Don’t you know you’re the daily sunshine of my living soul
Pull my strands like collenchyma
Living and adaptive
Wrinkled walls waiting for expansion
With tensile strength and integrity
Plot out the points in our garden manifestoing
I’m growing
We don’t need a greenhouse
Don’t you know we can use the rigid stakes of what was once green
Hard, woody sclerenchyma
Dead yet lignified
With their heavily thickened walls
Look for them in the non-growing regions
They’ll hold the walls tight so the light comes in
Let the magic begin
Glo/NaPoWriMo Day 8
“In his poem, Poet, No Thanks, Jean D’Amérique repeats the phrase “I wasn’t a poet” multiple times, while describing other things that he instead claims to have been. In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.“
Movie night, Tuesday night
Hop on into bed
Stack the pillows, make the popcorn
You heard what I said
Watch some trailers, take a vote
Which one should we watch?
Drizzle butter on the popcorn
And some butterscotch
“Thank you maam,” whispered the tree as I hit the patio with the leaf blower sending old dried leaves back her way.
“Blow those old leaves of mine right over here under me.”
She looked over her shoulder (the tree that is),
with her knotty eyes.
“You see all those branches he cut off me
I’m ok with that, i’s all good.
But yeah, just leave em to drop their leaves right hur under me.
You see sometimes the branches we’ve been holdin onto are just too dang heavy.
You, know that, ‘if your arm offends you’ kind of stuff. You think it’s normal to be holdin all this weight
stretchin yourself in everywhich way, but you really jus be riskin splittin yourself down the middle.
But yeah leave them old dead leaves right thur under me, blow them this way.
You see even though I don’t need them branches anymore,
I will take back all the nourishin lil of the bits of growth they produced.
Just compost that shit right back into my roots.”
Thunder early morning rumbles,
Blows a distant bhungal’s blare.
Winter, Spring dance and tumble,
Cloudswept jesters of the air.
And to their earthy audience,
Distracted by their screens,
They sweep windchimes euphonious
Creating quite a scene.
“Is it cold or is it hot?”
They call to everyone.
“The humans, look how they forgot,
In clouds and rain and sun,
“To get outside and dance and play
And sing among the trees.
Please join our open-air Bhavai.”
They whisper in the breeze.
Na/GloPoWriMo Day 4 prompt was to write a poem about weather and the change of seasons. The added challenge of rhyming led me to the word Bhavai, a 700 year old Gujarati folk theater form.
He carries the crafted trunks of trees and skins of animals
loading them adeptly in his gold chariot
and off he flies
The bearer of rhythm
He is of a long line of master teachers
whose drums turn
on their side and roll after them down ancient
pillared streets in
the dreams of men
The untrained ear may not consciously perceive the precision
with which he inserts each strike
Gun , Go Do , Pa Ta
He sculpts the rhythmic landscape
scanning the circle for eyes
and their gleaming windows into resonant caverns of the soul
He entrains tensions
detangles egos
and binds disparate views in pulsar orientation
The power of hand, intention, vibration, muscle, wood and skin
The dancers begin to tap their toes at the edge
Their hips move…sway
shoulders open as they step into the circle
Small Burdens 