The bees
find a lit fuse
inside each purple bloom,
then gather up the sparks to make
bright fire.
Look! I made a Crapsey! NaPoWriMo Day 5 prompt was to write a cinquain. I am not at all sure I got the stressed and unstressed syllables right. I find it very hard to hear these things, which makes meter a real challenge. Also, “fire” kind of has a hidden second syllable in it. Ah, well …
Slugs
Under the raspberries
under the mint
under the leaves,
a kingdom is growing,
moving, crossing
slick trails like swords
of wet dominion.
Under the tent tarp
under our heads
under our dreams,
a whole world
is sleeping with us,
unseen in the cool
and the damp,
mouthparts always
chewing on something,
be it memory or plan.
A word about Open Link Night: This takes place each Tuesday afternoon/evening/night at dVerse, a website by and for poets. You post a poem on your blog, and then you add a link on the dVerse site, and then you get lots and lots of new visitors (and of course, you visit other poets, too). Thanks again, Anna, for letting me know about it!
Poetic forms often scare me, but this was fun as a mental exercise, if nothing else. Also, you might think I’m now all caught up, but that sneaky NaPoWriMo lady gave a prompt right before things kicked off. So I’ll eventually post my effort for Day Zero (which sounds a little ominous).
Violet Triolet
What can I tell you about the violet?
It might grow wild, all over your yard.
I pick up the phone, begin to dial it;
what can I tell you about the violet?
Some people pot it and try to style it,
but those people are trying too hard.
What can I tell you about the violet?
It might grow wild, all over your yard.
Day 11: A Five Senses Poem
Wednesday Morning
Cool, smooth hand in mine;
how is it that she is still
so little, when her world
gets bigger every day,
and her personality is
as huge as the sun?
At our front door we see
a big, orange box that holds
a double stroller for our
upstairs neighbors, two
women who are about to be
two moms for two babies,
one boy and one girl.
In my left ear, I hear
my one little girl prattle
in her customary way
about how maybe she
can baby-sit these twins
once she’s 10 or 11, or
in her “late teens.”
We cross the busy street,
stop to sniff an early lilac
fooled by the good weather
last month; now its scent
is tamped down by the cold.
My mouth holds a hint
of coffee, masked by
Colgate’s finest; this is
the taste of a school day
when I drop her off
on the playground so
she can walk through
a big door, into a life
other than my own.
Day 3: A Wedding
Hydrangea
You are not my favorite flower.
I am about native plants, fragrance,
pollinators. You are fussy, foreign,
have no scent. And yet you are
a wedding as giddy as any I’ve ever
been to, enormous heads of pink and blue
on one plant, as long as there is, around
your roots, a marriage of acid soil and basic.
You unite the earth. You express it in color.
Pink blooms and blue, your salute to summer
and, I suppose, to love—I know my eyes
love you in spite of the rest of me.
Sometimes, too, you bloom in purple.
Then I think the earth around you is so
mixed, it can no longer be separated;
the two have become one flesh. Yours.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 