I Don't Want to Pass Through This

I Don’t Want to Pass Through This

The road where I’m walking
is an old railroad bed,
so I’m already thinking of trains
when a whistle travels the crisp air
and shivers the dew,
strung like lanterns from the
tips of green poles. 

A lone chicory is still in bloom.
Hickory nuts are hearts
cracked open at my feet.
I don’t want to pass through this
without breaking open,
letting sky
echo through me.

A white X carves the
hovering blue, like 
treasure being marked, like
you are here, like
are you here,
are you here, 
are you here?    

The Prompt

This poem found its footing on a single, particular road, but ended with a more encompassing map. True, it wasn’t a literal map, but maps are still my offering today for those of you craving a prompt to play around with.

Recall a time when you held a physical map in your hands. What sensations or stories come along with that memory? Did the paper make a crinkling sound? Did it resist tidy folding? Did it help you find the place you were trying to go? Did it tell you where you already were?

When you hear the word map, what springs to mind for you? Google maps? Star maps? Political maps? Trail maps? Maybe some sort of map I’ve never heard of? When I just entered the words “mapping your” into Google, it offered myriad suggestions for what might follow . . . mapping your career, mapping your past lives, mapping your nervous system, mapping your sexuality, mapping your social ecosystem, mapping your future budget calculator.

If you could possess a map for anywhere or anything, what kind of map would you want it to be? And what maps, on the other hand, are you most content to live without?

Play, sift, ponder, play, sift, ponder . . . until a poem falls out. Release yourself from the notion that it needs to be a “good” poem. If it comes from you, that’s good enough!

Wherever you may find yourself on the world’s political maps or sexuality maps or future budget calculator maps, I’m glad to find you here right now. I look forward to reading your poems and comments!