Inspired By Friday

Still working out how I want to blog more often this year. I like the idea of  "Inspired By" because our WordCrafters sponsor, Carrie, has a gift for finding prompts and it's fun to see how a single image or idea refracts through the group. This particular prompt was about creating something new in honor of the new year...which I didn't, in the end, do. There is something about beginnings that sometimes comes with blankness and the poem that would have summed that up is as follows:

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This is the poem that did arrive.

A Ragged, Strange Hospitality

Why don’t I ask you to leave?

This bright evening around us…

You're a limned shadow, across

This branching scar.

You stare at it, then away

Sunward, into blindness.

Too polite to ask with more

Than a glance and an “ouch.”

And that smile—go ahead, sit.

Odin hung, they say, for wisdom

His body like a bucket beneath a branch

On the tree of all worlds.

He gave an eye for his birds.

I think of sap, while the sugared coffee

Drains down my throat.

I was balancing on the wire fence

Railing the Starbucks from the highway

Wondering what I giving…

Who would take it.

Grackle laughs and lands on my shoulder

Offers me a trade, gouges Yggdrasil into my bicep

And forearm. Somewhere to sit, higher...

Some bird flew into my hair

And freaked. I had to share my bagel

To calm it down. He wanted

To write us both into an old myth

Of hospitality. 

Would you like a bite?