I have a lot of people to thank for today’s poem:  Natalie Goldberg for “start where you are,” Jacqualine-Marie for her poems that start one place and end another (see her blog Green Not Hazel), NaPoWriMo’s prompt for the day, several of my 1990 poems.  Natalie Goldberg says we’re garbage heaps – she’s right:  oh the things you find when you start excavating!

Reflections

Tomato seedlings stretch for sun
from the window’s white sill
interspersed with newly-sprouted somethings
left  last year in the soil pots.

Soon the lilacs will send their scent
floating in the windows on the cool night air.

Do you remember?  By the creek:
dappled sun, blue blanket and blue bells, wine
straight from the bottle – Boone’s Farm not
Franc – the forest humming with Spring.

Much later I spit venom at the starry sky,
and the moon, full and round as me, listened
but had no reply.  Was weaving made for this?

Shards piece to strands braided bright
as sun fleeing clouds, trailing rainbows.

Tonight I will travel in dreams, skip flat stones,
watch them sink leaving ripples that never end,
listen to the haunting calls of whip-o-wills and owls,
wonder: can they answer the questions I forgot to ask?

**

As will be my practice this year, this comes mostly unedited from what I write in the morning (except something always changes as I type, so not completely unedited).  This piece is new for me because much of it is not drawn from my own life (which tends to be my garbage heap of choice).  I am grateful for those writers who grace me with gifts of words.