If you’ve followed my blog for a bit, you know I like a challenge. It’s not just a way to set goals for myself, but more importantly, it’s how I outrun my anxiety. This time, I set out to write 100 poems in 100 days. I’ve been attempting to work on a collection of poems for two years, and this felt like the perfect way to put that effort into overdrive.
Now, about a week after completing the challenge, it’s time for a quick reflection:
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nobody asked me to swim
for all these days in water
slightly polluted and stinging
like nettles. they didn’t force
salt into my eyes or metaphors
into my nose, hell, barely a few
saw my arms flailing and feet
kicking as I tried to stay vertical,
no, perpendicular, no, moving.
moving through same old muck
but this time with a net. did fish
follow me? hooked or caught
by a word, probably not. waves
and tides. waves and tides. waves
and words and breathe and me.
wave goodbye to this, to another
hundred grains of time. waving
toward memory, toward waves.
swimming another lap, lapping
another time around the sun.
see my hands reach once more,
once more diving into your wave.
“i feel stars feeling me i am this one place here”—Neil
this building has four hallways
lined with comfy chairs
you’re down the one i’m not
sitting next to the window
sunlight absorbing fingers
typing eager, starry threads
for all you know that could be me
deep-rustling in the hedge
i weave a secret, tangled nest
to harbor all our warmth
fleeing from the hornet swarm
where old stings always burn
i track your footsteps in the dirt
tucked safely at your side
i am just a quiet ghost
lost among the leaves
within autumn brambles
where heavy light golds,
where acorn meets tide;
another me dies—
mark died of heart disease.
an abyssinian ground hornbill
who never stopped moving.
gone.
when you look at words long enough, you realize they mean. i am.
—Neil, unpublished poem
he was peter
and i his wendy
telling stories
of horse rides with cranes
of nursing babies
of watering gardens
and petting cats
go where sun meets
earth, under oak trees
warmed by summer’s
last breath. gather
my limbs, bundling
tight my fragility
and budlike body
until moon sighs
starlight, signaling
nature’s end of shift.
hang me by strings
near warm yellow
fabric until withering
i transform, forever
locked in wild
fragrant splendor.
