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 48th week of the year, Nov 26 to Dec 2, came from experiences of the week and prompts from Move Me Poetry on twitter.
With this week, we enter the final month of the year. Truly a milestone of my personal poetry challenge, with just 29 poems left for the year. I well remember writing that first poem, and putting a courageous "Poem #1" before its title. To be here is a celebration, not only of poetry, but my healing journey with MS.
I want to 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, as I sift the collection for poems I want to finalize. For now, they are new, not quite steady on their feet, but each speaks of something, so I share them, uncensored. It is part of my healing challenge to write a poem every day this year.
As always, you can keep track of Sifting the Rubble's posts on the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram platforms:
Facebook (daily posts) : https://www.facebook.com/BlueheronELG
Twitter https://twitter.com/SiftingThe
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sifting_the_rubble/
Please like and follow and share in whichever ways suit you. Thank you! :)
And now, for this week's poems!
Poem #330, Pomo Tierra Farm Family Fun at the Main House
by Emily Gibson, Nov 26, 2022
The main house had a sturdy kitchen
with walls of swiss cheese,
turned to acorn granaries
by industrious woodpeckers.
I want to 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, as I sift the collection for poems I want to finalize. For now, they are new, not quite steady on their feet, but each speaks of something, so I share them, uncensored. It is part of my healing challenge to write a poem every day this year.
As always, you can keep track of Sifting the Rubble's posts on the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram platforms:
Facebook (daily posts) : https://www.facebook.com/BlueheronELG
Twitter https://twitter.com/SiftingThe
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sifting_the_rubble/
Please like and follow and share in whichever ways suit you. Thank you! :)
And now, for this week's poems!
Poem #330, Pomo Tierra Farm Family Fun at the Main House
by Emily Gibson, Nov 26, 2022
The main house had a sturdy kitchen
with walls of swiss cheese,
turned to acorn granaries
by industrious woodpeckers.
No calls were needed to
close doors, as cold air came
close doors, as cold air came
in endlessly anyway. Thus,
the back door remained open,
the back door remained open,
for convenience of those with
armloads of items, and the front
door closed, for reasons unknown.
Outside, we sipped warm apple cider
in a post-dinner/pre-dessert dusk,
entertained by four dogs.
They entered, one after another,
the ever-open back door,
for tasty morsels on the kitchen floor,
then flowed through to be pushed
out the front door with a hollered
“No dogs in the house!” then a firmly
closed door after each dog’s tail.
We snacked on sliced apples,
entertained by a flock of "farm cousins"
bedecked by firefly glow sticks
that entered, one after the other,
the ever-open back door. They growled
as monster dinosaurs with wings
in search of attention and pie.
They, like the dogs, were expelled
like clockwork, through the front door
with calls to “Stay out, dessert’s not ready yet!”
Like a Three Stooges film with dogs and kids
substituted for slapstick brothers,
the show went on until
the whipped cream was thick enough,
since that back door
just never would be shut.
About "Pomo Tierra Farm Family Fun at the Main House ": Inspired by observations at Thanksgiving, at Pomo Tierra, an organic apple farm in California. This farm has been continuously occupied by a collection of Berkeley friends and families who purchased the farm in the 1970s, and whose grandchildren are now benefiting from the idyllic opportunities of childhoods spent at the farm. I was enchanted by the mirror images of the children and dogs who ran into the house and were exited out the other side, like clockwork, like a Three Stooges movie, for hours.
Poem #331, Beekeeper Warmth
by Emily Gibson, Nov 27, 2022
The world is ever
better, for the way
your face beamed, softened,
and smiled the first
time, and each time you
watched a video
rescue of bees and
hive that had called a
shed home for ten years.
Same way honey goes
soft in the warm sun.
About "Beekeeper Warmth": This short poem was inspired by a beekeeper friend's reaction when I showed him a video from Texas Beeworks. I wanted to capture the transformation of his face as he watched the bees get rescued, time and again. With this poem, I used short lines of 5 syllables. You can find the video of the bee rescue here: https://www.youtube.com/@TexasBeeworks
Poem #332, Fall Alights in the Oak Woodlands of Mendocino
by Emily Gibson, Nov 28, 2022
The end of fall is like a downshift
to first gear before a hard, cold stop
at the bottom of a hill. Yet I beg us consider
how the life left to wrest in fields and farms
looms large, like an iceberg under the soil.
Basket-weave acorn hats scatter among
burnt umber oak leaves, left by industrious
acorn woodpeckers who stuff hatless nuts,
like torpedoes, into generations of holes--
thousands upon thousands of holes--drilled
into a house of aged wood shingles
by generations of red-capped birds
who tend their food store through the winter
and rotate shrunken dried nuts to smaller holes.
In an apple orchard at the end of season
a few lone yellow apples beckon, still edible.
Two trees blink with weak but ripe citrus,
five fig bushes dangle tobacco-brown
leaves that twirl in a breeze to reveal
a few dark figs past the possibility of sweet.
Persimmon trees festooned with empty
fruit husks, like sad ornaments, gutted
by the wing-ed with hunger. Late bees
and hummingbirds still sip fragrant juice
from cracks in that ripe flesh that remains.
So much life,
in a post-dinner/pre-dessert dusk,
entertained by four dogs.
They entered, one after another,
the ever-open back door,
for tasty morsels on the kitchen floor,
then flowed through to be pushed
out the front door with a hollered
“No dogs in the house!” then a firmly
closed door after each dog’s tail.
We snacked on sliced apples,
entertained by a flock of "farm cousins"
bedecked by firefly glow sticks
that entered, one after the other,
the ever-open back door. They growled
as monster dinosaurs with wings
in search of attention and pie.
They, like the dogs, were expelled
like clockwork, through the front door
with calls to “Stay out, dessert’s not ready yet!”
Like a Three Stooges film with dogs and kids
substituted for slapstick brothers,
the show went on until
the whipped cream was thick enough,
since that back door
just never would be shut.
About "Pomo Tierra Farm Family Fun at the Main House ": Inspired by observations at Thanksgiving, at Pomo Tierra, an organic apple farm in California. This farm has been continuously occupied by a collection of Berkeley friends and families who purchased the farm in the 1970s, and whose grandchildren are now benefiting from the idyllic opportunities of childhoods spent at the farm. I was enchanted by the mirror images of the children and dogs who ran into the house and were exited out the other side, like clockwork, like a Three Stooges movie, for hours.
Poem #331, Beekeeper Warmth
by Emily Gibson, Nov 27, 2022
The world is ever
better, for the way
your face beamed, softened,
and smiled the first
time, and each time you
watched a video
rescue of bees and
hive that had called a
shed home for ten years.
Same way honey goes
soft in the warm sun.
About "Beekeeper Warmth": This short poem was inspired by a beekeeper friend's reaction when I showed him a video from Texas Beeworks. I wanted to capture the transformation of his face as he watched the bees get rescued, time and again. With this poem, I used short lines of 5 syllables. You can find the video of the bee rescue here: https://www.youtube.com/@TexasBeeworks
Poem #332, Fall Alights in the Oak Woodlands of Mendocino
by Emily Gibson, Nov 28, 2022
The end of fall is like a downshift
to first gear before a hard, cold stop
at the bottom of a hill. Yet I beg us consider
how the life left to wrest in fields and farms
looms large, like an iceberg under the soil.
Basket-weave acorn hats scatter among
burnt umber oak leaves, left by industrious
acorn woodpeckers who stuff hatless nuts,
like torpedoes, into generations of holes--
thousands upon thousands of holes--drilled
into a house of aged wood shingles
by generations of red-capped birds
who tend their food store through the winter
and rotate shrunken dried nuts to smaller holes.
In an apple orchard at the end of season
a few lone yellow apples beckon, still edible.
Two trees blink with weak but ripe citrus,
five fig bushes dangle tobacco-brown
leaves that twirl in a breeze to reveal
a few dark figs past the possibility of sweet.
Persimmon trees festooned with empty
fruit husks, like sad ornaments, gutted
by the wing-ed with hunger. Late bees
and hummingbirds still sip fragrant juice
from cracks in that ripe flesh that remains.
So much life,
so much light in the dark of the world,
beyond stars and fires,
human inventions of solar bulb strands
or even glow sticks on black dogs
that chase neon tennis balls
human inventions of solar bulb strands
or even glow sticks on black dogs
that chase neon tennis balls
into the night.
About "Fall Alights in the Oak Woodlands of Mendocino": This is another poem inspired during my trip to California over Thanksgiving week. We were at the Pomo Tierra apple farm in Mendocino County for two days, and I jotted down so many images that caught my senses and ended up finding their way into this poem.
Poem #333, In Awe of the Hydra, Part I
by Emily Gibson, Nov 29, 2022
The Greek word came first, to name water.
The Greek myth followed, a beast of snake heads.
Then a Greek island with two freshwater springs.
The many-headed hydra of lore has to be more
than a coincidence of resemblance with its namesake,
About "Fall Alights in the Oak Woodlands of Mendocino": This is another poem inspired during my trip to California over Thanksgiving week. We were at the Pomo Tierra apple farm in Mendocino County for two days, and I jotted down so many images that caught my senses and ended up finding their way into this poem.
Poem #333, In Awe of the Hydra, Part I
by Emily Gibson, Nov 29, 2022
The Greek word came first, to name water.
The Greek myth followed, a beast of snake heads.
Then a Greek island with two freshwater springs.
The many-headed hydra of lore has to be more
than a coincidence of resemblance with its namesake,
a tiny yet mighty predator of ponds and streams.
A living hydra measures the size of a grain of rice.
Its coin-flip of simple and complex surprises those
who think it a plant. Two layers of cells protect
its tube-sock cavity inside, topped with a head
of tentacles that wave with water’s currents.
You would not be amiss to reminisce on its relatives
A living hydra measures the size of a grain of rice.
Its coin-flip of simple and complex surprises those
who think it a plant. Two layers of cells protect
its tube-sock cavity inside, topped with a head
of tentacles that wave with water’s currents.
You would not be amiss to reminisce on its relatives
the jellyfish and anemones, as the hydra also sports
spring-loaded tentacle tips, aka nematocysts,
like living, retractable tools superheroes would envy.
Some tips catch and paralyze prey like fishhooks,
a few throw out cargo nets and trap prey like spider webs,
others shield against predators with stings and zings.
Though it creates the silhouette of a tiny kelp,
it is not rooted to one spot. Just watch its graceful
cartwheels and somersaults through the water,
propelled by a feat of nematocysts, not actual feet.
About "In Awe of the Hydra, Part I": This poem began with an assignment to write a deep metaphor, which is a metaphor on a single topic that sustains throughout an entire poem. I loved finding hydras in ponds that I studied as a child-naturalist, and they are a creature that engenders metaphors easily. This is an example of a poem I want to work much more on later. There is a part II of this metaphor that I will share next week.
Poem #334, A Tree Poem
by Emily Gibson, Nov 30, 2022
"Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky." – Kahlil Gibran
Look to the seaside cypress trees.
See them as the art they are:
land-bound, they make free-form poems,
sturdy, not frail. Their twisted trunks the
homemade stick pencils that Earth,
through the muse of wind, writes
star stories and songs upon
gnarled branches that stretch to fill the
unwritten books of her sky.
About "A Tree Poem": This is a golden shovel poem, which uses the text "Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky" as the ending words of the lines. When I first read this Kahlil Gibran's quote I immediately thought of cypress trees shaped by the wind.
Poem #335, Please, Signal Your Exit
by Emily Gibson, Dec 1, 2022
Woes of roundabouts in my town
turn our smiles down.
Winter brings ice,
driver advice.
Some argue signal etiquette--
a word roulette--
without the rules
all drive as fools.
Traffic lights seem bright until rush
hour gridlock crush
turns circles’ flow
to smart glow.
About "Please, Signal Your Exit": This is a “Minute Poem” which uses 3 stanzas of 4 lines. The first line of each stanza has 8 syllables, the other 3 lines have 4 syllables each. The poem totals 60 syllables, hence the name! Additionally, there is a rhyming scheme, with each pair of lines sharing a unique rhyme. This was a poetry challenge from Move Me Poetry this week. I chose the traffic circle as a theme since it is a common conversation topic in my community which boasts the second highest count of roundabouts in the U.S.
Poem #336, Who Fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981?
by Emily Gibson, Dec 2, 2022
I first cast my ballot in the era of Ronald Reagan,
A US politician from the Hollywood generation.
Little did this newbie voter realize
It wouldn’t be the first time for my country I’d apologize.
He earned the nickname “Uncle Ronbo”
from his proclivity to give soldiers ammo.
Despite the press coverage of his contra SNAFU,
Most still undervalue Nicaragua’s exports of nuts, cashew.
Twice, an electorate won one for “The Gipper”
a third only staved by the 22nd, so said the whisper.
Today’s squash of our rail workers' right to strike
lays squarely at the wheels of Reagan’s red trike.
About "Who Fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981?": Another Move Me Poetry challenge, this is my first attempt at Clerihew stanzas, which have 4 lines of irregular length and meter, but AABB rhymes. They are meant to be funny, about well-known people, and the end of the first line is usually the name of the person, often setting up interesting rhymes. I used this poem as an outlet for my fury at the political silencing of the rail workers who have been on strike because they have zero time off/sick leave. This silencing was a precedent set by this particular prior president.
And that concludes Sifting the Rubble's poetry for this week! I hope you enjoyed this collection of poems. Perhaps some of them spoke to you, or maybe you found one begging to be shared with someone else. If so, I hope you will pass it on! Either way, thank you for listening and reading. Hope to see you next week with seven new poems.
Some tips catch and paralyze prey like fishhooks,
a few throw out cargo nets and trap prey like spider webs,
others shield against predators with stings and zings.
Though it creates the silhouette of a tiny kelp,
it is not rooted to one spot. Just watch its graceful
cartwheels and somersaults through the water,
propelled by a feat of nematocysts, not actual feet.
About "In Awe of the Hydra, Part I": This poem began with an assignment to write a deep metaphor, which is a metaphor on a single topic that sustains throughout an entire poem. I loved finding hydras in ponds that I studied as a child-naturalist, and they are a creature that engenders metaphors easily. This is an example of a poem I want to work much more on later. There is a part II of this metaphor that I will share next week.
Poem #334, A Tree Poem
by Emily Gibson, Nov 30, 2022
"Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky." – Kahlil Gibran
Look to the seaside cypress trees.
See them as the art they are:
land-bound, they make free-form poems,
sturdy, not frail. Their twisted trunks the
homemade stick pencils that Earth,
through the muse of wind, writes
star stories and songs upon
gnarled branches that stretch to fill the
unwritten books of her sky.
About "A Tree Poem": This is a golden shovel poem, which uses the text "Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky" as the ending words of the lines. When I first read this Kahlil Gibran's quote I immediately thought of cypress trees shaped by the wind.
Poem #335, Please, Signal Your Exit
by Emily Gibson, Dec 1, 2022
Woes of roundabouts in my town
turn our smiles down.
Winter brings ice,
driver advice.
Some argue signal etiquette--
a word roulette--
without the rules
all drive as fools.
Traffic lights seem bright until rush
hour gridlock crush
turns circles’ flow
to smart glow.
About "Please, Signal Your Exit": This is a “Minute Poem” which uses 3 stanzas of 4 lines. The first line of each stanza has 8 syllables, the other 3 lines have 4 syllables each. The poem totals 60 syllables, hence the name! Additionally, there is a rhyming scheme, with each pair of lines sharing a unique rhyme. This was a poetry challenge from Move Me Poetry this week. I chose the traffic circle as a theme since it is a common conversation topic in my community which boasts the second highest count of roundabouts in the U.S.
Poem #336, Who Fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981?
by Emily Gibson, Dec 2, 2022
I first cast my ballot in the era of Ronald Reagan,
A US politician from the Hollywood generation.
Little did this newbie voter realize
It wouldn’t be the first time for my country I’d apologize.
He earned the nickname “Uncle Ronbo”
from his proclivity to give soldiers ammo.
Despite the press coverage of his contra SNAFU,
Most still undervalue Nicaragua’s exports of nuts, cashew.
Twice, an electorate won one for “The Gipper”
a third only staved by the 22nd, so said the whisper.
Today’s squash of our rail workers' right to strike
lays squarely at the wheels of Reagan’s red trike.
About "Who Fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981?": Another Move Me Poetry challenge, this is my first attempt at Clerihew stanzas, which have 4 lines of irregular length and meter, but AABB rhymes. They are meant to be funny, about well-known people, and the end of the first line is usually the name of the person, often setting up interesting rhymes. I used this poem as an outlet for my fury at the political silencing of the rail workers who have been on strike because they have zero time off/sick leave. This silencing was a precedent set by this particular prior president.
And that concludes Sifting the Rubble's poetry for this week! I hope you enjoyed this collection of poems. Perhaps some of them spoke to you, or maybe you found one begging to be shared with someone else. If so, I hope you will pass it on! Either way, thank you for listening and reading. Hope to see you next week with seven new poems.
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