The bald eagles
Launch from the bleached
Pole trees and
Soar up and up over
The head of the photographer below.
Sixteen in all.
Click, click, click
She captures them oblivious
And smiles to see them free and together
Before turning away for the long trek home oblivious
To their sharp eyes on her
watching her walk on the hard, skittery sand into her future.
Life.
Hills of disappointment.
Mirages of fusion
happiness
good news.
It’s Good Friday
When the hordes
Demanded blood
Not theirs but another’s
For the sin of uttering words
They didn’t want to hear
For not uttering the words
They wanted to hear
Words that rang, that sang, that clanged
In their heads
Of a Reality that doesn’t exist.
It’s Good Friday
When the people
Demanded a sacrifice
Not theirs but another’s
For the sin of uttering truth
They didn’t want to hear
For not uttering the lies
They wanted to hear
Truth that comforted them, that swung into sleep
Visions in their heads
Of a Reality that doesn’t exist.
It’s Good Friday
The curtain ripped
A life died
A life demanded
Into hell it sank
What is your blood?
What is your sacrifice?
Wings of flowing air
Amaze me
As they roll with flair
In the sky
And fly
Straight
Past
Their engines roaring, their blades turning
Fast, oh so fast.
Humans did that.
February. In the old days, snow so deep
you sunk up to your knees, slipped and slid
on the unshovelled walks.
February. In the new days, no snow,
that counts anyway.
February. In the old days, cold so sharp
you huddled in your fur coat, your wool coat,
your scarf and toque and mitts.
February. In the new days, not cold,
for a Canuck anyway.
February. In the old days, the short-long month
between Christmas and Easter,
an excuse to party.
February. In the new days, the month
with Family Day.
February. The lost month
that nobody wants and
nobody celebrates.
A hard-yet-easy poetry prompt for this Wednesday by Robert Brewer for Poetic Asides. It’s the hard things that happen to us that lend themselves most easily to poetry, not necessarily to writing good poetry but just writing it period.
“…write a poem about something you’ve been through. For instance, you may have been through a divorce, a car wreck, bankruptcy, detention, or the flu. Please make the something you’ve been through the title of your poem and go from there.”
So I did.
“Falling Down the Highway”
Tires hum on the blacktop
as lights in darkened buildings flash by
and overhead the giant sign warns
of the impending steep hill
we crest the unknown and fall
down the slope towards the cars all lined
up before the round green light
way down at the bottom where a street
crosses the highway we’re on
lights flash red one after one
like dominoes going down and Normand brakes
we accelerate down against the seatbelts
but they pull back pull back pull back pull
we kiss the backs of the seats snugly
as we stop centimetres short of the car ahead
one two…I release my breath and continue
writing in my head only it’s not over
the shock of contact stops time
my left arm reaches up to cradle my once-
damaged neck in time for another
the shock of contact stops thoughts
I stare out the windshield whole
cause of the seatbelt and see a white
car flash past on the shoulder.
I started by wanting to put together a video of my helicopter trip over the Kaskawulsh Glacier near Vulcan Mountain, the one I took when I was visiting the Yukon. But something wasn’t adding up, and then I realised it needed words. I found a poem from my poem-a-day challenge that fits with what these photos evoke in me, and I had to decide: text or spoken. Well, I was too tired and too impatient to figure out how to line up the spoken words with the right photos and have music too in MovieMaker, so I went with text. I’m familiar with working with text in a video anyway.
And so a poetry video was born.
Rebirth in the Onyx Ice
Today’s poetry challenge on Poetic Asides blog was what would you do if you suddenly got a million dollars. I know what I’d do!
“Lightness”
Million dollars flutter down;
my shoulders unburden
from the debt.
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