World in Transition

World in Transition

Honeysuckle just goes for it—
autumn’s last green thing
flaunts the first green of spring,
whereas maples and buckeyes,
whom I favor,
bleed their way slowly back,
leaf buds red and waxing
while spring spills over the fields
like morning light,
like a clear day, finally,
after a yawning stretch of gray,

and I spill breath
into the air,
will green things
to sip it up.
I try to pour it
down to clover
and gasp it high
up to the canopy,
try to sidestep
the too-easy green
that sprawls and pushes
against the margins.

I’m loathe to say
anyone doesn’t belong,
but loathe, too, 
to watch one kind of creature
gorge on light
while others parch
in the growing shadows.

The mosses are thirsty,
and wild onions and toothworts
deserve to taste the sun. 

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

The Prompt

Six or seven years ago, the owner of the farm where I live cleared the honeysuckle from the woods. In the sudden sunlight on the forest floor, saplings took root—red oaks, buckeyes, eastern red cedar. Around them, ephemeral flowers sprung up—larkspur, trout lily, the occasional wild pink. Every year, though, more honeysuckle grows back, and as the hedge thickens, flowers disappear and the slower growing saplings stall or languish. If you read my poem and thought of parallels to the changes in the sociopolitical world, well, yes, so did I. When abundance is hoarded, it generates scarcity. When power is hoarded, it drives injustice.

If you would like a prompt to play with today, then sing me a song of the underdog! What overlooked, underappreciated, or under-resourced being or object fills you with tenderness? Your neighbor’s toothless cat? The child up the street whose clothes never fit quite right or who always seems to be playing alone? Your favorite sports team? That super awkward but well meaning guy at work? The slightly deflated basketball that you choose from the rack, even though there’s a bouncier one nearby? The houseplant who always looks sad? The house with the shutters falling off?

When I think of underdogs right now, my mind goes to marginalized groups. I think of trans folks and immigrants, of Palestinians and even of federal employees (not a group I would normally think to call marginalized). If that’s where your mind goes and where your heart goes, let it. And yet sometimes, it’s easier to write about our biggest aches by writing about something else—to write about injustice and inequality by, say, writing about honeysuckle. You don’t need to plan that sort of thing in advance. I didn’t. I was literally intending to write about honeysuckle and about the things turning green around me, but then the poem revealed my own heart to me, shone a light on the ache that sits just below the surface of my day.

So maybe start with something or someone very particular? Something or someone whom you can describe in vivid detail. Someone or something who inspires in you a vivid tenderness. And as you write about them, just leave a little room so that if some other truth or feeling wants to speak through the images on the page, there’s air and light and space for that. No need to force anything, here. No need to impose some deeper meaning. The key, I think, is simply not to crowd anything out—not to be so certain about where your poem is headed that you cut off other possibilities. That’s my favorite part of writing poems—the mystery, the surprise, the way I’m slowly revealed to myself a bit at a time, and how bit by bit, I’m changed by that experience of revelation.

Thank you for the ways in which you reveal and share yourselves here. Reading your poems is always a delight and honor. I look forward to seeing them in the comments thread!

P.S. Mark your calendar!

LeeAnn Pickrell

and I will be hosting another Zoom poetry reading and open mic on Sunday, April 13 at 12:00 PDT/ 3:00 EDT! More details to come, but I will reveal one exciting little teaser . . . our very own

Keith Aron

is one of the readers!