If birds can do it, why can't we?
If birds can do it, why can’t we?
We trace power lines
with our own bodies,
bend our curves to
crooked straightness,
every connection
volatile
or precarious as a
ladder.
Do we lack the wings
to change this—or the will?
If it’s feathers we need,
let’s parade in boas and
lift our murmurs
skyward, every voice
taking flight.
It is time
for fluid shapes.
It is time
for thrumming wings.
It is time
for power lines
to be buried
deep
underground. 
Photo by Nicholas Bartos on Unsplash
The Prompt
This poem was prompted by the sight of a power line, covered in birds. It made me wonder if birds ever lined up perfectly straight like that before humans started building perfectly straight things. Thankfully, birds have not lost their capacity to murmurate, to fly according to their own compass, or to perch in the wild branching of trees. I don’t think we humans have lost these capacities either, metaphorically speaking.
For today’s prompt, I invite you to look around at the many places where human-made structures (or human-altered habitats) meet wildness. Notice the birds on the fencerow, the weeds pressing up through cracks in sidewalks, or the lone dandelion roaring from the middle of a pesticide-laced lawn.
What do you know about the history of the spaces you inhabit? What do you think they looked, sounded, or smelled like 100, 200, or 500 years ago?
Can you still find a hint of wildness in or near your office? Where is the wildness in the grocery store? In the parking lot? In the carefully planned garden or park? In your own body or mind or heart? What happens when the tame and the wild collide?
Let this prompt take you wherever it takes you, friends! I look forward to reading what you come up with.
P.S. I’ll be traveling for the better part of the next two weeks, and I may deviate from my two-posts-a-week rhythm during that time. After all, if I’m too rigid about my schedule, we’ll end up with 104 poems this year rather than 100, and “104 Poems” would be a lousy Substack name IMO. If you find yourself in need of a prompt and don’t get an email from me, consider dipping into the archives. Even if you’ve written a poem for every single prompt I’ve offered this year (wow! to those of you who have actually achieved that!), my guess is that if you revisit an old prompt from this new space that you’re in today, something fresh and perhaps surprising will emerge.
Enjoy your vacation, may it bring rest, renewal and enjoyment.
.
The Invasion that Never Happened. (Working title)
.
There is a solitary small ant
standing on the matchbox
that lives tucked into the side
of the kitchen window ledge.
.
Just standing there, a scout,
her pheromone dispensing antenna
sending messages to the other ants
that are waiting close by.
.
She - all worker ants are she -
is black and just a little bit shiny
where sunlight splashes onto
her thorax through the grimy glass.
.
There was a storm last night
and it splashed the ground
so hard dust flew high,
struck and stuck to the panes.
.
She is stood on the front of the box
where the pattern is colourful,
bright yellows, red and greens
decorating the clean white cardboard .
.
It is a good choice - the matchbox -
in the shade of the herbs growing there,
plants pots a secure defence behind her,
she can safely survey the area beyond.
.
She sees me, hands covered in bubbles,
both frozen now, contemplating.
I am barely breathing. Her head tilts,
the antenna wave of danger. And she is gone.
.
A different safer route will need to be found.
It IS time for power lines to be buried deep underground. Literally *and* poetically.
*
I suspect that when it all started,
it was quite unintentional,
the way in which
it became conventional
to favor the synthetic over the natural.
The way in which we unwittingly converted
the planet into a funhouse fully retrofitted
with mirrors that twist and contort,
deny and distort until
the abnormal landed, fully normalized.
And now we no longer recognize
that we, too sprang from the dirt,
wild and raw.
Speaking of dirt, do you suppose
that Mother Earth feels all that
asphalt and steel as webs of scar tissue
tugging taut over her skin?
A constant reminder of the cosmetic surgery
we perform haphazardly, time and again
without her consent?
Or that she inhales the fumes of our
perceived progress like second-hand smoke?
It seems we expected her protestations
to come packaged politely, lyrically
in language we could understand.
The very same language that paved
the road to perdition, that one that
promises annihilation.
But her native tongue is not one of words,
but tempests and temperature
and though she communicates passionately,
we do not hear her.