Ribcage
Ribcage
How is it that sap shines like tears but tastes of sugar? That running again after all this time feels like a pulsing stillness? There are no straight lines through the woods. Butterweed builds golden walls, I bend through buzzing doors. The earth aches aliveness—or is that me? I am a heart beating out of its chest. All day, I bang against ribs. All day, sugar pours from wounds, and light falls to the dark ground like something spilled and sticky sweet. When my bones join the puddles, I hope they’ll be a trellis.
Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash
The Prompt
This poem was prompted for me by the same run in the woods (my first run in over a year, due to a back injury) that inspired the poem Opening, shared a few posts back. Maybe for every poem we write about a particular experience or mood or insight, there’s another poem or two or ten thousand waiting in the wings. Which is all to say . . . keep playing! Keep exploring! Keep writing! Let your life be a muse.
If you’d like a prompt to play with today, I offer you the humble words “all day.” Make a list of ten-ish ways you might finish a sentence that begins with the words “all day.” Dial your filter down to zero. Don’t worry that a sentence is too boring or mundane, too fantastical, too vengeful, or too anything else. Just jot down your ten or so sentences—or speak them aloud. Notice which one of these sentences (or which combination of sentences) pulls you most. There’s your prompt!
Note that you can absolutely ditch the words “all day” when you write your actual poem. Those words are just here to help ideas begin to flow. Keep them for as long as they’re helpful, then dump them as soon as they’re not.
I look forward to reading your poems and reflections! They are such bright spots in my life. Which is to say, of course, that you are bright spots in my life. Thank you one and all.
P.S. If any of you dear readers happen to live in the vicinity of Denver, CO, I’ll be there next week . . . come join me for some poetry writing and “forest bathing” in Washington Park on the evening of Wednesday, May 29. You can find more info and register (for free) here. If you don’t live in Denver but know someone who does and might be interested, please pass the link on!
Where do spiders go when it rains?
I have heard of the one
who fell down the drain and
somehow climbed back up again
safe and sound
once the rain had dried out,
but I doubt
most would fare so well
in such a risky scenario,
and would likely drown.
.
All day, I have awaited
the rain, thinking again and again
of the spiders I have glimpsed
in the garden, and wondered
about their fate.
.
Do they tuck themselves
under branches and leaves
the way that we sometimes duck
under eaves to get relief
from a downpour?
.
Do they have their own version
of our indoors
outside, where they hide
until the wetness has finally subsided?
.
Do they simply settle
into their webs and hope
for the best, legs crossed
this storm isn't their last?
.
Or do they sneak
through the cracks of the closest
available shack, seeking shelter
in whatever home
they can find it?
.
I am holding my breath
the way the sky
holds off the drips,
hesitant to let any air slip
through my lips as the storm
slowly eases in.
.
And while I am wondering
and looking outside,
the small web in the window
catches my eye -- it is empty,
and I cannot tell if this news
bodes well for
the tiny spider who was there
just this morning.
.
At least I can surmise
that this ruminating of mine
implies a graduation from the hate
I used to claim against
all of their kind.
I love the question of whether it is the earth or you aching with aliveness! Also love the image of you as a heart beating out the earth's chest. We are truly one, and this poem captures that essence so beautifully. My offering on the prompt:
*
All day long the trees receive with magnanimity
the burdens that fall to them under the gravity
of greed.
They suffer without complaint the weight of hate-
fully heavy demands we’ve reframed to name
as need. The incomprehensible, indefensible need
for more.
More now.
More, faster.
More, bigger,
More, cheaper.
Even though more is still somehow
not enough, never enough, no matter how much,
and the trees just keep taking up
our carbonaceous slack, getting absolutely nothing back
except
more of the same.
Where is our shame?
Alchemized like carbon into oxygen we breathe freely,
courtesy of undeserved arboreal magnanimity?