Voyeurism (Let's Go Peeping)
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
Voyeurism
The fog is singing. It might be a love song. It might be that every droplet of water has lungs and wings and a heart beating just for this patch of ground. Clouds kiss the mud, and I’m caught between, trying not to look, unable to turn away, unable to still my beating heart, unwilling to clip my sudden wings.
The Prompt
If the parenthetical subtitle to this post has you feeling nervous (or nervously titillated), rest assured that I’m referring only to the most innocent and upstanding sort of peeping! For this week’s prompt, I invite you to deeply notice the interactions occurring around you that don’t directly include you. Maybe you spend some time admiring the relationship between woodpecker and snag or roots and ground or tree and sun and shadow. Maybe you listen in for a moment on that loud conversation happening at the table next to yours. Maybe you take some time to watch your babies—whether furry or human—playing with one another. You might read the news and view it through the lens of interactions—whether between people or ideas, agendas, ambitions, hopes, or fears.
How does it feel to witness an interaction that doesn’t include you? Do you find yourself identifying with one party or the other? Do you find yourself taking on the emotions of one participant or of the interaction as a whole? Do you, simply through the attentiveness of your witnessing, feel included somehow after all?
I wish you pleasant peeping, friends, and I look forward to reading your poems and reflections in the comments thread!
Keith, the ending is so gorgeous I literally gasped out loud! Gorgeous and true. I love your language early in the poem about dropping into the woods and thereby dropping into yourself. I know that feeling so well. And the notion that you’re speaking by proxy through chickadees (who are maybe also speaking through you?) . . . so good!
This is so delightful! It has this magical, whimsical, slightly mysterious quality to it. I’m left with so many questions about Molly Rose and about the other attendees of coffee hour . . . but the fact that you’ve left me wanting to know more feels like part of the swirling, twirling magic of your poem and, I suspect, of Molly Rose!