Every once in a while I try my hand at some fancyass prose just to see what happens.
Occasionally I come up with something with which I am fairly satisfied, and two of those recent examples are here and here.
For the first poem, Bending Slightly in the Breeze, I didn’t set out to write a poem initially. I drive past several sunflower fields on the way to work each day, and I think, when they are in full bloom, they are one of the most beautiful sights on earth. After several trips back and forth, I realized that almost every single flower faced east. I still don’t know why that’s the case (anyone know?), and I found it very interesting. Also, the entire field on a small hillside just makes it look like the country is on fire with joy, especially as the sun dips low in the sky at the end of the day.
I tried taking a picture of the fields with my phone as I drove by (not the safest thing, I know), and the pictures just didn’t do them justice. Not even close. It was then that I grabbed my phone one morning and recorded a voice memo of what it was like to drive past the flowers, and that eventually morphed into the poem.
I wondered what it would be like to be one of those flowers. They looked like they were all patiently waiting for something…but what? Anyone see the movie City of Angels? It reminded me of when the angels would gather on the beach every single morning to watch the sun rise and hear the glorious music that came with it. Perhaps these sunflowers were echos of those angels. What would it be like to be among them? I wanted to see what they saw.
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For the second poem, This Was Where She Belonged, I again thought of the sunflowers since they remind me of the hills being on fire, but it was also inspired by some real, scary flames. Recently, my partner’s place of business was threatened by a grass fire. It’s a remote area with only one road as an entrance/exit and he and his coworkers were not allowed to evacuate for fear they’d clog the route for emergency vehicles needing to get in. After a very tense hour or so, the fire was put out about 100 feet from his building, after his office had begun to fill up with smoke. Needless to say, I was very happy to see him after work that day.
Back to the poem, I imagined my human/sunflower (notice her feet were still rooted in the soil) from the first poem threatened by a fast-moving, evil, destructive grass fire. The last part of the poem was about…acceptance, I suppose. She couldn’t outrun the fire (indeed, I was trained in such matters as a summer camp counselor), and so she accepted…her fate, whatever that may be.
Maybe the fire would spare her. Maybe she’d get burned and rise from the ashes. And maybe the fire would get put out in the nick of time, just 100 feet away.
Psychobabble 