Poetry Friday round-up with Carol at Carol’s Corner.
I signed up years ago for the Poem a Day email from Poets.org. But my inbox gets full of them. I feel like I need a stretch of time to read them all. And then sometimes when I open the poem-of-the-day, I am inspired to write. I get distracted from what needs to be done. I am like an artist in “flow.” Borrow a line. Steal a pattern.
My bumper sticker should read, “I’d rather be writing a poem.”
This one is patterned from Rebecca Lehmann’s poem Natural History using anaphora (repetition) of “Here comes” and “Tell me.”
Here comes light
streaming down the bayou
like a surfer riding the waves.
Here comes wind,
in a stream of its own
wiggling those chimes.
Tell me bent cypress branches,
how year after year
you shed and redress
in brighter green.Here comes the sun
casting a shadow of the mother oak
I spread my arms wide
in tableau, statue of majesty.
Tell me the child swinging on your rope,
how she came to you when her mother cried,
finding another mother in your shade.Here comes the land
softened by hard rain
answering our prayer.
Tell me about wet,
how all at once you feel fat
and full like resurrection.Here comes grey cat
the one with no tail
flipping at my feet.
Tell me what you see
at night on the lonely road.
Whisper your wisdom.
Follow me home.–Margaret Simon
Reflections on the Teche 