A Poem a Day, Week 10: March 5 to 11, 2022
Poem #64, Giants with Toys
by Emily Gibson, Mar 5, 2022
Oregon’s Santiam River canyon,
a study of human actions
on the world.
Reservoir levels sunken below
soggy stumps of a once-was forest,
all equally high,
like a buzz cut, sometime before
or after a
dammed river drowned it all.
Two years past,
a fire raced the canyon,
hot winds
tindered on brittle vegetation,
offspring of multiple droughts.
Flames ate everything
except a red metal waterwheel,
spared by a miracle of fire fighters
spared by a miracle.
Cleanup of the devastation,
a neatening of the chaos of dead foliage,
all scattered like a bedroom floor
where giants’ children played
in Lincoln logs and tiddlywinks,
and erected teepees from slash and sludge.
Orange-brown logs tumble from
the ridgeline, sprinkling down the slope,
toothpicks scattered in the wind.
When will we learn to think
beyond our lives to the generations to come,
beyond our families to the interlocking
web of flora and fauna?
We are no longer giants playing with toys.
We never were.
About this poem: The images from the Santiam fires of 2020 are striking on the drive to/from Salem. As a passenger this time, I jotted down notes and took photos to capture what I saw, knowing there was a poem waiting. It started with the image of trees like toys, and how human actions have far more consequence that most people understand or want to know.
by Emily Gibson, Mar 6, 2022
My mind is a sweater writing on a cliff.
It unravels, leaving fuzzy cursive loops
catching on hangnails of ridges and ruts.
My mind is tree bark dreaming about a ranch.
It rushes to leave what is, for what could be,
missing the strength layered upon what was.
My mind is a bicycle yelling at the refrigerator.
It thinks self-driven propulsion is best,
forgetting the quenching cold of iced watermelon.
My mind is a diaphragm stretching across Australia.
It thinks about everything everywhere all at once,
never settling on the desert’s focused breath.
My mind is a book swinging above a pond.
It is stubborn on how days stretch to eternity,
ignoring the fatality of one mindless slip.
My mind is a carpet cooking across a staircase.
It flows over life’s idiosyncrasies
improvising lost ingredients.
About this poem: This poem was inspired by exercise in a poetry class on metaphor. We brainstormed 6 tangible nouns, 6 active verbs, and 6 more tangible nouns. We jotted down a body part, and then made sentences using a prepositional phrase between the verb and second noun. I originally chose "elbow" as my body part, but the metaphors fell kind of flat. When I substituted mind, they popped. It was fitting because the topic of mindfulness was heavy on my mind this week!
Poem #66, “Golden Shovel” Poem List
(inspired by the 1st line of Linda Pastan’s poem Lists)
by Emily Gibson, Mar 7 2022
Dreaming, I
never made
truth. A
never-ending list
composed
of too many
things invisible.
But truth I
never did make.
About this poem: A Golden Shovel poem uses each word of a line of an existing poem, as the last word on each line of a new poem. The line I used from Linda Pastan’s poem was “I made a list of things I have.” After you have written the poem, you can play with the language to help the poem emerge, as I did with turning the last word "have" into "make" to mirror the beginning line. It was neat to see this take shape.
Poem #67 Great Blue Heron, a Ghazal Poem
by Emily Gibson, Mar 8, 2022
From nowhere you appear, harbinger of sorts
Silent on wings no one can hear, messenger of sorts.
Upright of posture, wearing a suit of gray,
Tall and slim, somewhat severe, an emissary of sorts.
Evening ends with setting sun’s clouds. You call home,
Lifting off from a sodden pier, a dispatch of sorts.
Magician of illusion, are you a tree or reed?
Disappearing, only to reappear, an agent of sorts.
Alone, hunting is your lure, but not just for your digestion,
Carrying meals for offspring, sans bandolier, a courier of consorts.
Clarifying muddy mire, when my mind I cannot make,
Slicing legs into water smooth as an engineer, an envoy of sorts.
Fluid in sky, steady in water, yellow hunting eyes
Sharp as a well-honed spear, a go-between of sorts.
My totem being, beacon to my truth, sooth
Sayer of yes on questions unclear, a herald of sorts.
About this poem: A Ghazal Poem is a poetic form from Persia/Arabia. Couplets, with the second line repeating a phrase, and a rhyme (the first stanza, both lines end with the phrase). In this poem, I altered the form a bit, by having the phrase be “a ______ of sorts” and the _______ is a word that is a synonym for messenger. The rhyme is before this phrase, a word that rhymes with “hear.” Each couplet could stand alone as its own short poem.
Poem #68 Stoic Serenity, a Villanelle Poem
by Emily Gibson, Mar 9, 2022
Serenity comes from knowing your mind--
Let go of that which you cannot control.
Peace, inside your sphere of influence, find.
If focus lies on what others assigned,
A manic mind runs on a hamster roll.
Serenity comes from knowing your mind.
Throughout your life, control will be declined.
Attempts to exert your will, such a shoal!
Peace, inside your sphere of influence, find.
Here it is, in case you need a remind,
A guidance for your true heart’s inner soul:
Serenity comes from knowing your mind.
Endeavor at control makes the mind blind.
Though rewarded you may seem, on the whole,
Peace, inside your sphere of influence, find.
All you control, in your thoughts is enshrined,
Those Stoic philosophers did extol.
Serenity comes from knowing your mind.
Peace, inside your sphere of influence, find.
About this poem: This is a Villanelle Poem form, which has a clear structure. One of the most famous poets who used the Villanelle is Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” In the first stanza, the 1st and 3rd line are used again in the following stanzas, and the rhyme pattern is repeated throughout (ABA). The final stanza is 4 lines (ABAA). I used Thomas’s structure of 10 syllable lines, for the rhythm it provides. The topic is straight out of the book, The Daily Stoic that I am reading, pretty much focused on the mind as your only spere of influence.
Poem #69, Move over, Heart
by Emily Gibson, Mar 10, 2022
Overused shack of emotions and love,
your shadow eclipses other organs it seems,
making invisible their qualities
of tenderness and intimacy.
Why is the spleen incapable of feeling?
What makes the patella unable to lust, or
an epiglottis the unlikely symbol of devotion?
the lobed liver as iconic an image.
Children could easily craft construction paper
cerebellums, to gift on Valentine’s Day.
Imagine reclaiming the middle finger
as a symbol of connection.
We could hold the universe of our passions
within our integumentary systems of skin.
Move over, heart,
there’s a new organ of endearment
awaiting a rainbow of emojis.
About this poem: When going over my poems with the teacher of my Sunday class, she said something about heart being used too much, or being a throwaway word in the context I used it in. Then I noticed that I had the word "heart" in all 3 of the poems I had written for the class! So this poem was born....
Poem #70, Feeling Competitively
I don’t care about winning.
Games have emotional reasons, sure,
winning isn’t one of mine.
Trouncing competitors doesn’t feel good
if it happens too often or the margin is too wide.
Accidentally “missing” a play,
just so the game doesn’t end too soon? Maybe,
maybe more than twice, I, in a rare winning streak,
back off to offer a chance to another.
It feels fairer to me, and utterly unfair to those who worship
at the altar of winning.
I play games for emotional reasons, artistic reasons, belonging reasons.
In Monopoly, yellow and orange properties go in my portfolio first,
as well as Marvin Gardens (A Beatles’ song never written)
and St. James (infirmary blues!).
Having a complete set of light blue properties feels better.
Even though you need two hotels on each to forstall bankruptcy.
My brother played for blood. After 3 rounds of Go
He owned the entire Park Place side of the board, all the railroads
and was well on his way to obliterating my rearing horse’s
financial existence in less than 60 minutes.
No wonder I didn’t care about winning!
I was used to, not having a ruthless bone in my body.
As a risk adverse player, I can’t take chances,
the sweat on my brow, my shifty eyes give me away,
every time I try shooting the moon in Hearts.
Yet decades crafting a persona incapable of a bluff,
no one expects me to,
so I do.
And raucous laughter ensues.
Games are about relationships, time with people worrying
about something other than topics to talk.
I care about winning, not the way most people do.
An excuse
a lure,
a means to an end,
to build memories of feelings
under cover of competition.
About this poem: If you have watched my TEDEd Talk "The Nature of Impatience", this poem will sound familiar, because I first wrote about playing Monopoly with my brother in that script. I wasn't finished with the topic, though, and found myself wanting to dwell more on games, so this poem was born.
Thanks for reading and/or listening to this week's poetry podcast! See you next week for seven more poems!
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