A Poem a Day, Week 27, July 2 to July 8, 2022
Welcome to Sifting the Rubble's weekly blog and podcast of my poem-a-day challenge for 2022. I am your host, and poet, Emily Gibson. As I navigate this healing journey, as I sift the rubble of my once-life to figure out what I will do next, I find myself relishing each day's poem, as I often do not know what will come from my pen! The poems for the 27th week of the year, July 2 to July 8, find their origins primarily from introspection on nature, nurture, and celebrations.
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And now, for this week's poems!
Poem #183, Long Like Kite Strings
by Emily Gibson, July 2, 2022
Your 77 years
measures long
like kite strings
or a drive on 101 from
But maybe not long enough
for you to see and do
all you wanted just yet.
Keeper of memories
of brothers six,
to children four.
About "Long Like Kite Strings": I wrote this poem to commemorate my father's 77th birthday. He sent me a wonderful selfie. Comparing this photo to one of his much younger self, on a porch in upstate New York, sitting (on right) with his brother, Phil (on left), led me to these words.
Poem #184, Skip-Jump-Step
by Emily Gibson, July 3, 2022
I used to walk
behind
and do this skip-jump-step
to try and keep up.
My 7-year-old legs
were no match.
I wonder if you
did the same
to your father’s
long-legged stride
before you grew
to be my dad.
About "Skip-Step-Jump": I often think about walking with my dad, and trying to keep up with his long, easy stride. When I saw this photo of him (in center) with his brother, Rob, and their father, it got me thinking what it might have been like for him.
Poem #185, Sparklers
by Emily Gibson, July 4, 2022
Simple fizz of sparks
tinted hands red or green,
silver or blue.
A box of multicolored
sticks, treasured.
Traced letters on the sky
or flashed like a meteor.
Ground lit up in old movie style
by dropped bits of molten lead.
Safe from wildfires
in our next-door rock quarry
celebrating summer
innocently.
To lust after that which others
possess or embody.
To consider off-limits territories
like sky and water,
snow and desert,
and make them
habitable,
at least for a few,
for a moment.
Are we the only species that visions
other ways of being?
Can an African Baobab tree
comprehend life
as a flexible willow or aspen,
and dream to bow
and sway in a breeze?
Would a cranky heron wish
to be content in a school of tuna
flying below the waves,
hundreds moving as one?
Might a whale crave legs
to run across a desert
and feel hot sand between its toes?
Or a cheetah determine to be slow,
to crawl a branch, upside down,
in search of a most delectable leaf?
Perhaps life is richer and deeper
when one’s roots are secure in
what is,
not obsessively reaching for what
could be.
Maybe an absence of possibility
could eradicate anxieties of “what if.”
I’ll never know,
for I am human.
This capacity to dream
is our birthright.
by Emily Gibson, July 6, 2022
When the orange cat I
chased away
with sticks and threats
was a wee kitten
it would have engendered a softness
that I reserved for the duckling
that devil cat nearly ate today.
It was just doing what cats do:
programmed to hunt
torment
torture
weak young things.
Ducks have a dozen ducklings
or more, to ensure
plenty to spare,
some make it, some don’t.
But I don't hear the panicked
peep-peep-peep
of all the baby birds
this feral cat takes
to survive.
Just this one,
today.
Poem #188, How Insignificant
by Emily Gibson, July 7, 2022
I am insignificant,
that is not news,
merely a single human
in a long line of humans,
on a single planet.
Oh, how magnificent a planet!
Circling around a grand sun.
Yet our sun is just one star
of many millions in our galaxy.
Oh, such a perfect spiral galaxy!
Sadly, a common, mundane one
among the sea of brilliantly formed galaxies
like plankton clustered across our universe.
We are so small,
it is impossible to grasp, unless
we could pull back far enough to see
how common our universe might be,
among a flotilla of other universes?
Scale is everything.
Still, tiny as I am,
I did something only I could do
on this day
on this planet,
in this corner of our galaxy,
hidden in deep space.
Something that mattered more
than all the stars in the universe.
I saved a duckling’s life,
to be free as a duck once more.
In repayment, I received
a lesson in presence.
That duckling likely died
soon after, from a fellow duck's rejection
or later that night by predator’s jaw.
Yet that swim across a pond,
that delight in fellow ducks,
that insistent peep to belong...
It is the stuff of life.
What could be more significant?
Poem #189, Three Flocks Feed
by Emily Gibson, July 8, 2022
If not for their colors,
the flickers, jays, and robins
hunting on my lawn
could be birds of the same feather.
They come in waves,
each bird’s cheerful chirrup
brings others of its kind to feast.
First the orange breasted robins
then the flash of blue jays,
later the flickers with side stripes like gills.
Only one species at a time,
perhaps as different meals
come up for grabs.
Maybe they hear a “Ding!”
signaling their order is up?
Stretched tall and slim and still,
eye and ear tuned to ground,
a silent stab
turns grub
or hatched moth
or worm
or beetle
into a meal
for a bird's stomach now,
or hungry hatchlings later.
About "Three Flocks Feed": On this day, I noticed the waves of birds, and how similar their silhouettes were, if not for their differences in plumage. I also noticed that each bird type was hunting specific catch. With this poem, I wanted to document this bit of nature I was able to observe.
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