June 23: Earth
A little behind on June poems, but I’m playing catchup:
Earthbound
Charlie and Alta doubted the moon landing,
believing instead the claims that footage
had been shot somewhere in Arizona.
Even then, for them, a trip to Arizona
was as likely as one to the moon.
They could have thrown a rock and hit
Tennessee from their front yard in Zip City,
where they sat on the porch in metal folding chairs
watching cars zip by, heading to state line for beer.
They turned in early for bed, long before
the barflies started weaving their way home
Their old black Impala only crossed the state line
when they got a hankering for adventure
and fried catfish at the café in Leoma.
They never once boarded a plane, rarely
brought their car all the way to fifty-five,
preferring to leave early, take their time,
make it home before dark, before the moon.
Having spent so much time looking down,
hoeing, plowing, always on the lookout
for copperheads, they were earthbound
by choice, the red clay in their blood.
They trusted the moon to hang there untrampled,
a night light to owls and quiet creatures.
They eyed instead the sun, the rainclouds
moving in from the west, prayer answered.
June 14: Plume
Plumes
After a week herding two dozen teenagers
through Europe, watching them strut,
reminding them to speak softer, be safer.
At eighteen, they think everyone likes them
almost as much as they like themselves.
Everything is a punch line or a photo op.
For ten days, this motley crew behaves
like best friends, a feeling only I know
will dissipate when they get back home,
almost before they leave baggage claim.
While they might as well be at Disney
as they tour Leeds Castle and get lost
in the boxwood maze, they stop short
at the sight of a pure white peacock,
prancing, strutting, his tail plumes
fanned wide as he turns slow circles
stealing the attention they’ve craved.
Every camera in our crowd takes aim.
June 13: Plum
Prunes
| “Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes.” |
| Frank Lloyd Wright |
Such sour grapes, or plums perhaps,
to see all change that comes with age
as great tragedy or at least misfortune.
Grapes can be made into raisins or wine,
and a supply of either is met with demand.
But connotation’s everything: a plum job,
desired by all, but we turn up our noses
at prunes. Fine silver builds a patina,
but perfectly good skin, even well-kept,
will bear lines if lived in. Like the path
the cattle take day after day across fields,
the smile lines carve as deeply as frowns.
I waste my time telling the young
to enjoy that fine, firm body, toned
and tanned, looking sweet to the taste.
Today’s pleasure foreshadows change
most would rather ignore, hoping
when the time comes for soft plum light.
June 12: More
More
Just one more magazine subscription,
one more Pampered Chef party away
from my own episode of Hoarders,
I realize we now need less, not more.
With children grown and gone,
I fill their rooms with my books,
projects started, then forgotten,
so many keepsakes they lose
their value in the abundance.
I need, instead, more time to talk,
more open space, more sleep,
more rest. I need the freedom
to pick up and move if we choose,
without filling boxes of stuff
we’ll stack in another garage.
I need to give more—more
of myself, my love, the precious
resources that tend to dissipate
as the hands of the clock turn.
I need only more friends, and
yes, more love, and all of you.
June 11 Prompt: Jones
Jones
Marrying a Jones, Becky made the most
of the ubiquity, acquiring a name
as common as Smith on hotel registers
and phone books. When the Possum
came to town, they planned to go,
despite his reputation for booking
and then disappointing his fans
while off on a bender—perhaps
considering it country music research.
Becky knew she could at least score
a t-shirt: I saw No-Show Jones,
whether she saw him or not.
Day Ten: Green
As Green As
Her compliments wielded less weight
than her insults, which, though never profane,
hit their targets like a blunt mallet:
Seeing anyone bearded, shaggy, unkempt,
she’d say he looked like Hairless Joe.
The naïve, she’d say, were as “green
as goose poots and grass tops.”
Even though we couldn’t always
put a finger on her precise meaning,
young as we were, we rarely struggled
to decipher the tone of her similes
and metaphors. Sizing up the weather
hers never rained cats and dogs,
but “pitchforks and little nekkid babies.”
By the time we knew to shush her
she was too old to listen or to care.
June 9: Wicked Prompt
Wicked
She always went against type,
auditioning to play antagonists,
abandoning her good girl image
and putting on evil, channeling
every childhood fright—
Cruella de Ville clad
in Dalmation furs,
Cinderella’s stepmother,
the big bad wolf—
to climb inside each role,
a venomous, raspy-voiced,
chain-smoking vixen,
the other woman,
gun-totin’ outlaws’ moll
driving the getaway car.
Backstage, after final curtain,
she washed away the meanness
with her makeup, returning
to her gentle, loving self.
She never fended off fans
in the grocery store lines;
so sweet, no one recognized
her when she played herself.
June 2013: Thirty by Thirty Challenge
Thirty-by-Thirty Challenge
Day 7: Tremble
I’ll take a little poetic–or musical–license with Khara’s prompt today and move from tremble to tremolo, a beautiful effect I’m trying to perfect on the mandolin. I love to watch the best players, who make it seem so effortless.
Tremolo
Music, sweetest this side of heaven,
played with a worn pick by hands
large and weathered, the left curved
around the neck, the right, moving
imperceptible as hummingbird wings,
in a steady tremolo, without fanfare
from Wayfaring Stranger, sung soft
like mourning, to Ashokan Farewell.
His hand slides over the paired strings
without the aid of eyes. It just knows
where to go, finding double stops
between strings. Some call it a gift,
which makes the big man laugh.
A lifetime, he knows, the price he pays,
without regret, to claim this gift.
Day 6: Bitter ( a HexSonnetta)
I’ll borrow the form from yesterday’s Poetic Bloomings (after reading that we have made our food less nourishing as we’ve chosen to make it sweeter:
Bitter
How often we complain
whenever we must eat
the bitter with the sweet
and look with such disdain
at herbs that sprout with rain
in tufts along the street
Wise ones who came before
knew bitterness of taste
meant nothing went to waste
to nourish even poor
folks, right outside their door,
plants others missed in haste
to get their sweeter fare,
less nourishing than air.
Alabama Tar Heel 