For All Creatures of Good Heart 25/30 for Chai & Bamboo

Todays Poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo is a clerihew poem. Although, they are usually only 4 lines, I needed an extra quatrain for the benefit of all sentient beings.

For goodness sakes Madame Woodland Park Zoo,

You've made a gargantuan travesty of the lives of chai and bamboo,

These sentient beings and the other zoo lot,

Aren't just novelties like dodo birds or triceratops. 

It's time to do right Monsiers and Madams,

Letting go of your money, your accreditation and stand.

Send Chai and Bamboo to retire in peace,

And for all creatures of good heart to be released. 

In this Air I'll Shine 24/30

From water I'll come,

To breathe a new kind of light.

In this air I'll shine.

I Am Enough 23/30

It's a simple tweak

Gentle touch and

Barely noticeable smile. 

The one just underneath the skin

Like maybe because it's always there,

Always tilted up without effort 

In a thought of kindness 

Or swoosh of sweetness. 

An Illusive opposite of shadow

A sensual passing through. 

What is that rising flutter in my heart?

A infinitesimal shift

With a colossal effect. 

A momentous rejoicing

With the smallest of sighs. 

Enough, enough, enough!

I am enough.

What If? 22/30

What if the rain never came?

Drip 

                  drop 

                               dry. 

There'd be nothing to wash 

The tangles from your hair,

Or the soot from your pores. 

What if the sky never filled with clouds?

Drip 

                  drop. 

Each lost droplet a lost idea 

For the clouds are the accumulation 

Of all the ideas and dreams 

Of the people down below. 

What if the thoughts stopped coming?

Drip. 

                                    Drip. 

                                                                     Drip. 

                                                                                                   Drip. 

What if?

All The Things Your Heart Is 16/30

Take all the things your heart is

      And all the things your heart isn't, 

Can them 

      Into a jar 

                                  And watch the flickering lights 

                                                                   Blink on and

                                                                                      off like summer 

                                                                                    Fire bugs on a 

                                                                             Dim lit hazy night.

Above stars will play

                                Hide and seek

                                                  With night clouds 

                                                                             And moon-shadows.

When you go to slumber

Your mind will buzz 

With a million thoughts 

Until 

        Sleep 

                 sets 

                         you 

                                 free.

Tomorrow is Tax Day 14/30

Each moment is significant. 

For example, this line at the post office. 

Tomorrow is tax day. 

That mom with the two young children. 

What she says to them: wait here. 

How they look at her. 

And they are watching, learning, learning about waiting. 

Children are always learning about waiting. 

The older woman behind me. 

How she chews her fingers and looks around. 

Once she was young and then after that she was somewhere in between 

like me. 

Each line has a memory of another line. 

Whether or not the end of any line gets you what you wanted, 

the wait is often noted, recorded, reviewed. 

Each anticipation of any wait-er has been solidified in the mind; 

calcified blocks of 

personal stories and vignettes. 

How our waiting settles into these clerks, 

perhaps to ground their slowness to slow 

and then seemingly slower.

Did someone press pause on this moment? 

Is it for me to finally notice?

Should I take this time for something significant? 

Conversely, sometimes it seems we believe 

that frantically looking around at anyone 

who will meet our eye will speed up the process. 

We are all waiting for our turn. 

Life is not waiting for us, but oh how we wait for it. 

For it to happen. 

For it to unfold and reveal its mysteries. 

Right now is always fighting our anxiety with 

elongated space between here and there. 

Every line in our life is like time passing. 

How we wait is telling. 

How we wait 

is who we are

In each 

significant moment. 

This One to the Sea 11/30

Mother takes the hand of little fingers,

kissing them one by one.

This finger down the mountain,

This finger through the trees,

This finger touch the sky,

This one to the sea.

Mother touches so gently each blade of grassy hair on little heads.

Here sprouts the life,

Here the flowing gold,

Here flowering seeds,

Here the dreaming folds.

Mother walks with care, small steps and slowly.

First steps in the water,

First falling to the ground,

First dance with windy music,

First whispers in the round.

Murky Waters 5/30

Murky waters. 

A place to stay away from,

Perhaps a state to beware of.

Or rather something to not get mixed up in. 

It might be too deep,

Too dark,

Unclean or worse. 

Yet, from the womb we emerge

A sooty mess,

All muddy from pure beings blood,

And we arrive full of light,

Having endured the darkest 

Mysteries of life.

#puddlepoem #napowrimo2015 #napowrimo #poemaday #poetrymonth #poetry #earthart

Birdy Told Me Nothing 3/30

A little birdy told me nothing. 

Nothing about what was to be. 

Not a tweet about love,

Or loss, or glee. 

Of pain, hope and joy, there was silence,

Only a lone crow caw upsetting the balance. 

No flits of light on my shoulder,

Or visions of happy life when I'm older. 

Just here and now, amongst sky and ground. 

Inside just this moments sudden breeze I am found. 

A little birdy said nothing to me,

                                         and as it will be, 

                                                   Only a song for its mate

                            High in the tree. 

Lengths of Time Like an Inch Worm

Let me know when you take flight.

And how the air is sweeter,

That leaves a bitter trail as you go.

I’ll be watching from below.

How the air breathes sweeter,

Swollen with fertile scents and satiated longings.

Left with the bitter trail, here I stay

Watching from afar in the gap between the twist and fray

Swollen, with fertile scents, to satiate the longings,

The lengths of time like an inch worm.

Watching, from afar, the gap twists the fray

Alone I lay.

In lengths of time

you to will land, tired,

Near to where I lay below,

As you share your sweetened glow.