A Poem a Day, Week 39, Sept 24 to 30, 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. The poems for the 39th week of the year, September 24 to 30, found their origins in the onset of fall, poetry prompts, interesting words, and a bike ride on the Tualatin Scenic Bikeway.I would be remis if I didn't explain for those new to this podcast that these are 1 or 2 day poems, which have not gone through the grist of revision. That comes later, something I truly look forward to doing. For now, they are new, not quite steady or solid, but each has something to say, so I share them, uncensored. It is part of my challenge.
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And now, for this week's poems!
Poem #267, Red Bug Odds
by Emily Gibson, Sept 24, 2022
What are the odds that two
red-backed bugs with wavy feelers
and black legs that ended in flat bug feet--
like yellow legs from the
Cootie game (™ Schaper 1976)--
would choose nearly the same minute
to walk across the same picnic table
at the same rest stop
along the Banks-Vernonia
Rail Trail in Oregon?
Nearly the same odds that I
would choose that same morning
to cycle that same trail
and stop at the exact table
where two red bugs walked.
Glad I am at those odds.
Poem #268, A Course of Horse
by Emily Gibson, Sept 25, 2022
The horse I pulled handfuls of grass for just to hear her nicker
The horse I visited three times a day for my survival
The horse I raced bareback on the beach
The horse who jumped me over a dead sea lion
The horse black as just poured tar
The horse who’s greatest gift was not softening
The horse who stayed until he could not stand
The horse I helped as it suffered until its owner could let go
The horse I rediscovered my confidence with
The horse I said no to
The horse who blocked everyone out, but me
The horse who froze at sight of a log that looked like a bear
The horse who mirrored my feelings until I understood
The horse who left too soon and left regret in its place
The horse I tried too hard with
The horse that I didn’t try hard enough to know
The horse I brushed but never rode
The horse I loved
The horse that hated alfalfa
The horse who bucked me off 4 times in one day
The horse who left me on the trail after a 180 turn
The horse I gentled who changed me
The horse I took to four states
The horse I buried in the 3rd state
The horse with a spirit out of reach, buried in unkindness
The horse I spent 30 years with in Humboldt County
The horse I spent 3 hours with on a beach in Mexico
The horse that looked on in amusement as I I hauled hay up a hill on a hand-built sled
The horse I built five fences for
The horse with perfect, hardy hooves I learned to trim on
The horse who needed the most absurdly expensive farrier just to walk
The horse who still fertilizes a garden, from underneath, now
The horse I wish I’d done better for
The horse I learned to ride on
The horse I introduced a saddle to
The horse who was putty in a veterinarian’s hands
The horse who grew two feet and snorted at sight of the vet’s truck
The horse I can still smell, and the one I can still feel
A herd of fifty years of horses thunder through my memory.
Thanks to a girl with glasses who moved to my town in 5th grade.
The new kid outcast and me, the misfit poor kid mixed a friendship
Of untouchable magic woven amid our last years of childhood
with her six horses and ponies in that small seaside town.
Poem #269, Pool Party
by Emily Gibson, Sept 26, 2022
I remember our porch pit stop on flight paths of birds,
like Hobbits with first breakfasts and before lunch snacks,
to eat like a bird is to eat like a horse:
all day, every opportunity, anything in sight.
Our bird feeders of seed, nectar, suet,
lumps of peanut butter or margarine in lean times,
decorated the porch railings high and low
giving our front window a feathered picture show.
A water stop wasn’t necessary
in our lush Redwood forest of home.
I learned their names and calls, can remember them all:
Blue-jays, juncos, hummingbirds, wild pigeons and doves,
pileated woodpeckers, robins, yellow-bellied sap suckers,
even occasional hawks on the hunt.
Most memorable were the chickadee chicks
who grew up on our porch, their proud parents
paraded wide, yellow-mouthed babes
fluffed to twice adult size as they cried “feed me”
in chickadee chirps. Two hatchings each season.
I left home, and save a hummingbird feeder in Idaho,
never fed wild birds again. Cost and responsibility
the prohibitive elements. How our mom afforded
bird seed and suet in the Seventies, on Welfare
remains a mystery. Probably cheaper than
cable TV and video games and birds
never broke or led to boredom.
This summer, front and back lawns sport
pit stops for parched high desert birds
in the heat and smoke of our summer.
Their world full of seeds and bugs and worms,
no need to feed them. Not Hobbits, this region’s
birds, but camels, with liquid blue maps of their world.
Just two trays, filled every day, but bird word
spread as fast as a tweet on twitter, ‘til from our blinded
windows we see them cycle in, as if on timers.
The bird convoy has changed a bit,
still blue jays, flickers, robins, and wild doves,
plus a steady stream of drab-colored, small
seed and bug eaters with names yet a mystery to me,
but at least five species that I can see.
Most enjoyable is a rowdy brood of anonymous
flycatchers who descend to our water hole
and turn it to a lawn pool party
for daily baths and beverages.
A marauding horde of nearly ten that
absorbs water like feathered sponges.
Poem #270 Slow Drip
by Emily Gibson, Sept 27, 2022
Your slow drip of resentment--
unconscious,
like an IV of
anger--
creeped insidiously
across the floor
of my childhood,
the way an innocuous
amount of water can spread
miles
before you even notice
the tipped glass.
Like an infant spittlebug
I cocooned in the froth of your
rage--legitimate though
misdirected to innocents.
It infused my cells.
I could not escape
my inheritance of
judgment,
until illness
showed me how.
Poem #271, Mountain Shore
by Emily Gibson, Sept 28, 2022
A mountain line
below a smoke free sky
became a shoreline.
Westerly winds brought
the first line of fire’s discharge
like gray cotton candy
or quilt batting
stretched thin.
Land lifted it up
memory’s eyes saw a mirage,
a fog bank risen from the sea.
Mountains turned dark in layers
like magnets might attract
the iron of smoke,
until the ash of burnt catches up,
the point tips,
the sky turns brown.
Poem #272, Warmth
by Emily Gibson, Sept 29, 2022
Fall is here, in this photo,
in my brother’s rust overalls,
our Mom’s flaming hair and
buttoned scarlet velvet shirt,
our dog’ Mouse’s leather collar
and gray coat of curly fur,
the warmth of my teal sweater’s wool,
a thick redwood trunk behind us.
Close, warm, we all
look to the camera
while Mouse looks at us.
About "Warmth": This poem goes with one of my favorite early childhood photos, from the year (1969), when we moved to the little house in the redwoods. It symbolizes fall for me and the incredible memories of that season in our redwood grove. This day and time of year is also always a reminder of when our mom died. So I wanted to write a poem for her, today.
Poem #273, Pine Needles
by Emily Gibson, Sept 30, 2022
Toasted brown, like
kiln-baked ceramic strands,
these bundles of three
crunch under my tread
as uncooked spaghetti noodles
or ramen before liquid might.
Discarded, tree’s purpose served,
ready for their next lives
as woven baskets
garden compost
whisk brooms
rodent nests…
One being’s discards,
wanted.
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