I Could Be Many Things
Clouds are white blankets, folded and stacked. Branches are arms, brown, thin, beckoning. Leaves are fingers snapping, crisping call to pay attention. Birds can be anything. They shape themselves to a black ship. They bob, dip, murmur about the end of the earth. I could be many things, but today, I am only a woman who looks at the sky and cries.
Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash
The Prompt
Just as the light fades and the mud thickens and the cold gray begins its seep into my bones and I begin to think that maybe I am not as keen on nature as I used to be, birds arrive in great flocks, each member a dab of paint, and suddenly the gray sky, the brown fields, my shivering body, we are all a canvas. (Yes, I have been shat upon several times.) I will never stop gasping at the birds’ murmurations with their wild and shifting shapes. Well, unless we kill off the birds. (I hate that such a notion seems not implausible.)
If you’d like a prompt to play with today, then I offer up shape shifting. What in your environment changes shape? Clouds? Flocking birds? A creek after rain? A sandy shoreline? Your holiday waistline? The length of your lifeline? A dancing conga line? (Sorry, I kinda got on a roll there and didn’t want to stop.)
What within you shifts its shape? Your mood? Your energy? Your emotions or thoughts or opinions? What does this shape shifting feel like? How does it live out of you and into the world? How do you wish it lived out of you and into the world?
What shape shifting do you observe in the wider world? The shape shifting of public opinion? The shape shifting of national borders? The shifting shapes we wedge between ourselves and the “other”? As you ponder geopolitical shape shifting, notice if you sense parallels with the way your own inner landscape shifts or the way aspects of nature shift and evolve. How might a murmuration be a metaphor for American political life, for example? Or how might your changing moods be a metaphor for the changing relationships between nations?
Play with this, friends. You don’t need to write a Pushcart prize winning poem here. Find a direction that excites you, and write into it. If your poem wants to shift its shape as you go, let it! Explore. Have fun. Giggle a bit, if you’d like. Or let your rage/grief/fear/snark pour out in some new way you didn’t see coming. I look forward to reading whatever you care to share!
P.S. Somehow, I really don’t know how, this is the 97th post here on 100 Poems! 3 more to go, and I’ve met my goal for the year. The experience has far surpassed anything I imagined or thought to hope for—and that’s thanks to all of you and the gift of getting to engage with you and read your poetry and comments. For those of you who had poetry-related goals or intentions for the year, how is all of that looking or feeling for you?
Lisa, one more thing and I apologize for my chatterbox brain tonight. One, I forgive you for popping my dream bubble about the Pushcart Prize. I keep waiting for them to be in touch.
Two, your note about this being the 97th poem brought elation and then...a wistful sadness. This journey through Kaitlin Curtice's Poem a Day in May then Jillian's Joy'swonderful taking up of that mantle and then youu carrying forth has taken me further than I ever dreamed and connected me with so many special and gifted soul seekers. No words can express my gratitude, but these will do for now. Thank you, Teacher!
A person in our largest NH city was referred to me recently, and I was able to meet her today. It was a shape shifting moment.
Blind Eyes
^
You have lived in darkness for so long,
shaming my constant chatter about light.
Your wide open eyes no longer seeing what they once did,
your heart and intuitive spirit have replaced
the visible with the spiritual,
so that you see with your whole being;
you feel the world in ways I’ll never know.
^
Climbing narrow, rickety stairs to your third floor apartment,
hearing stories of a life as if
they escaped from the latest bestseller.
Your resilient courage and the super hero
way you find joy even in the oppressive chokehold of
a society glorying its poverty.
A survivor rising out of the victim.
^
I shed tears as I listen
grateful that you cannot see
until you look up and say
“Let the tears flow; they are healing you and me;
there is no need to hide from the shadows.”
Aware on this bitter cold night of all you do not have
you showed me instead all that you do.