Creek: a concept my eyes skim across like a too-familiar word. Brown thing, wet thing. I almost walk past the thing, but blue on brown catches my eye, catches my breath— there is sky on the water, and a fish is breaking free of clouds, his silver belly its own sun. He jumps, splashes, shatters creek, shatters sky.
The Prompt
Sometimes, I move through the world as if it is made of concepts rather than of concrete and particular things. I see a tree, label it “tree,” and continue about my day without noticing that the seed pods have just dried to brown and the leaves are almost their summer size. I overlook the laciness of the lichen-splattered trunk, miss the beauty of that branch held out like a beckoning arm.
It’s easy to reduce the world to static concepts. Our brains want to be efficient. They have countless filters and filing systems in place to help them do this. And that’s a good thing! There’s so much to do and so much to absorb—we can’t notice everything. But we can be intentional about stepping out of these filters and into a fuller experience of our environment.
For today’s prompt, choose something whose particularity you have never paused to appreciate. It could be a tree that you walk past regularly but have never stopped to experience more closely. Or it could be something non-living that is integral to your life but used without awareness or thought: refrigerator, sock, doorknob, charger.
Take some time to notice and contemplate the particularity of this being or object. What sensory details reveal themselves upon closer inspection? What might this history of this object/being be? Where has it traveled? Who or what has it encountered?
I look forward to reading your poems—and to catching up on your poems from my last post! It’s been a very busy few days. I hope you’re well, friends, and I’m so grateful that you’re here.
Such a great prompt...elevating the mundane, the seen but unseen, the unsung heroes all around?? I love the way your last lines captured so well the gorgeous way in which water mirrors sky, and so can shatter, mirror-like.
My muse for this was unexpected: a big, fat housefly that somehow made its way inside. Because of your prompt, it caused me to see it. See it differently, yes, but really see it.
Here's what came of it:
You sneak in below the radar,
your whine barely sticking
to the slippery slope of
my semi-consciousness.
You again, I think without thinking.
And by you again, I don’t mean you
specifically, but rather
you as in your kind,
the whole filthy lot of you,
who
I have, hundreds of terrible times,
automatically, cocksuredly, emphatically
othered,
pronouncing you worthless
at best. Accordingly, I immediately,
righteously, zealously reach
for anything,
anything at all I might
wield as a cudgel to bludgeon
you into silent oblivion.
I hear you so hard, it matches
the throb of my own fury, but
my slow, simple eyes cannot
lock you down as you zig,
zag, weave, loop, and plunge,
dizzying me with your ace pilot
derring-do. How I loathe you
as I chase behind,
winded and waiting
for you to land.
You, a fraction of my size,
cause me to shrink. Never have I
felt quite as small as
as I do watching you watch me –
so many of me -
through your compound eyes,
lunging, flailing, failing
to flatten you. Is that glee
I detect in your buzz?
If so, rightly so.
250 million years of cunning (and counting)
who am I to break you, to take you
for anything but the miracle and
masterful survivor you are?
I took the prompt to my front yard, where we have a willow tree that my husband planted several years ago - it is the focal point of our little property and serves as a beautiful backdrop for pictures and even my daughter's wedding last fall. My late mother-in-law had this little face that she had out in her garden and my hubby put it on the tree a few years ago - now it is a part of it!
Your long and graceful branches rustle in the gentlest of breezes
And on a clear day sunlight dances with the shadows beneath them.
You are sweeping rather than weeping,
A magnificent sentinel of the landscape.
Your towering height belies your mere 12 years.
Although, in willow tree terms, you are approaching middle age.
The whimsical face on your trunk suggests this older countenance,
And indicates that you could impart much wisdom to those who seek it:
“During the winds of the storm, be strong enough to bend,
Though you may lose a few branches, your roots remain anchored.”