A poem for my Aunt and Uncle. |
Bent grass weeps beneath the weight of winter’s stride; I am here, inside, nearly alone, thinking thoughts aplenty. It should be of no surprise then, that some turn towards my Andover kin, to my uncle and my aunt, for to arrest considerations would ransom my reward. Ideas that are as new as incandescence, or perhaps ancient as the brontosaurus peering out across tropical savanna. My thoughts dry cups and dishes edged in aqua, and tie the worn out laces of brown Florsheims. They frame the steaming locomotive bridged high above lakeside lowlands where steel mills once stood; they blanket the sky with a billowing smoke for miles, they embrace the weathered, aging docks that dot the placid bays where fishermen set out with tackle and hardiness and hope. I think of Center Road, of rhododendrons and the thorny rose, of an added oak deck carefully built with skilled hands and canopied against a blazing sun. And I study in hospitality, when the taste of a thick steak plays symphonic melodies on taste buds. Notions rain as if mountains do not exist, as if a dream kneads muscles in a stiff neck. Those orange and scarlet flowers then burst to life from fragile, white glass…a butterfly alights, delicate, deliberate, with quivering wings and beating heart. It does not think, yet lives, and is partaking of vast, ancient rhythms coursing through us all. It is to weep, to laugh, it is to appreciate, it is to love. For my Uncle and my Aunt, for both of you, all my best hopes, all my best dreams, all my love. 34 Lines (Form: Hendecasyllabic) 11 Rhythm Writer’s Cramp Winner 4-28-20 Use: “orange” |