Saturation

Nine hours of interstate and my car sloshes into the two muddy ruts that pass for a driveway. I step out into the rain expecting the usual scent of pine, but am instead blessed by a breeze saturated with lilac and lily of the valley.

I am early this year — I’ve never seen the lilacs bloom; never seen the lily fronds petaled with fallen apple and quince blossoms.

Birdbath with apple blossoms

It must have been raining for days. The bushes and trees hang heavily, and the ground is soggy beneath my bare feet as I traipse back and forth, back and forth through the wet grass, blue jeans rolled to my knees, carrying my cats, my books, my cooler, my clothes.

Unpacked, I return to the car and head to the spring in the glistening dusk. I drive slowly, windows open, and breathe.

And breathe.

Every small hollow is full of water and bursting with song. I’ve never heard the spring peepers here, either, and I swerve drunkenly to miss the scores of sex-crazed frogs leaping wildly across the road.

Across from the spring, bits of mist drift down the dark mountain and promise a heavy morning fog. Below, the Ashuelot River dances giddily along its banks dressed in decorative white foam, as if rushing to a rendezvous downstream.

I fill my bottles with fresh water and nature fills my soul with springtime scents and songs.

I am here.

 

 

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Inside the President’s Head: A Poem

Through the president’s head swarm nightmarish images known only to him. Mostly recently, he saw that black president we had — you remember, the one who ruined America? — scurrying through the halls of trump tower, listening at doors and wiretapping phones.

Or something.

The president’s supporters attempt to stay abreast of their hero’s nightmares so that they can protect and defend him. Tweeting paranoid delusions as if they are truth, calling in to radio talk shows to decry the latest outrage, sharing alternative facts on Breitbart’s comments page.

It keeps a person busy! You hardly have time to think before you make your rally signs:

Did she think this was funny?

For those of us still living in what I think is reality, here is a poem in response to the word prompt: swarm.

Swarms of Mexican rapists and drug dealers descend on innocent golf courses, stealing landscaping jobs from hard working Americans, while hoards of black hooligans hidden under hoodies swarm our hellish cities, torching trump™ hotels and ruining the gold drapes.

Swarthy Iranians — or maybe they are Indians — swarm college campuses, pretending to be students, while boys who used to be girls and girls who used to be boys swarm school bathrooms and try to recruit our kids to turn gay.

IRS officials swarm West Virginia, hauling away coal miners for not buying Obamacare, while EPA officials swarm small businesses, forcing nice white men to fill out forms in triplicate and stop dumping toxics in the rivers.

Illegals, dead Democrats, and people in pink hats swarm polling places and vote for nasty women, while swarms of paid protesters, pretend judges, and dishonest reporters keep harping on about the so-called Constitution.

Don’t Buy the Trumpian Golden Glitter: A Poem

Don’t Buy the Trumpian Glitter: A Poem

I wish I had time to tell how all that glitters is not gold.

How gold drapes in the Oval Office magnify a black heart of greed.

How shiny “health savings accounts” break the backs of the sick.

How the promise of “trickle down” tax policy does nothing but piss on the poor.

How pretending that climate change doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.

How the myth of “making America great again” is fraught with #FakeMemories

How the lure of “someone who says what he thinks” can lead to nuclear war.

I wish I had time to tell how all that glitters is not gold.

Because I love today’s word prompt:

Glitter.

Don’t Buy It

Daily Prompt: An Ode to Dancing Memories

There are two, two dancing memories:

Early, early on – I think I was three,

My older sister played Elvis

Very, very quietly lest Mom hear the banned music.

My brother and I stood rapt

As she pulled a towel

Back and forth, back and forth across her backside.

Her arms pumped and her hips swayed,

“See? It’s like you’re drying with a towel,” she said,

As she taught us the Twist.

At seven, I leapt about the Florida room

Flailing my sun-pinked arms like a gawky flamingo.

My father’s Mexican sombrero lay on the floor

And I danced circles around it to the strains of some Spanish composer,

While Mom paused in her sweeping to smile, nod, and applaud

As the classical music that she so loved

Danced through her youngest child.

* * * * * * * *

Thanks to WordPress for this very fun Daily Prompt. Do you have early memories of dancing?

I Don’t Like Poetry, but I’ve Written Some

I recently went to a prose poetry workshop at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. An oxymoron, right? I thought that prose and poetry were by definition different animals. Not anymore, not in the postmodern era when anyone gets to do whatever they want and call it whatever they want.

Prose poetry is basically poetic prose – regular ol’ writing with some of the elements of poetry, like rhythm and repetition and word imagery and  “compression,” which means getting rid of extra words. Obviously the latter is not something I’ve mastered. (Compressed that would read: I blather.)

I was excited to learn about this literary form; it changes the way I think about poetry and makes it more accessible.

I have never understood poetry and always wondered why writers can’t just say what they mean without getting all complicated and obtuse.

In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate poetry (or at least poets) through the Johns Hopkins Masters Writing program . . . but only the teensiest bit. I still have a problem with poetry, but at least I know it’s my problem, not the poet’s.

In fact, I want to be a poet. Then I could wear a beret, right?

Which is why prose poetry is good news for people like me. I love playing with words and sounds and flow and metaphor. Perhaps we non-poets can aspire to poetry?

Anyway, in celebration of doing whatever I want and calling it whatever I want (hey, in summer anything goes), I’m going to share these with you and call them poetry.

Planet Prose Poetry

Night Magic

A winking airplane is as magical as a firefly

If at first you think

it is a firefly.

Renewal

Where the trees stood,

Before the chainsaws came to kill,

Now raspberries and wildflowers grow

And deer come to eat.

Oh Well

The wells don’t dry up anymore,

And I can shower in August

Since the flooding began.

Climate change, they say.

Oh well.

I can shower in August.

Hello?

On the crest of the mountain

Grow two cell phone towers painted blue and green

To match the sky and trees.

How stupid

Do they think we are?

Thanks for humoring me. Poets among you — I would love your feedback in the comments!