I Could Be Many Things

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?