Embracing the Canvas

It's the purple heart of an amoeba
Devouring the map or the grey edge
Billowing white; stalking toward us on slant legs--
Thunderclouds leaning into their drift
Bullying the fences down the block
Chill rumors of the time they shoved the umbrella
Down the side yard in a crumple.
I'm hugging the umbrella, fumbling
For the ties, whispering that it'll be okay
The storm will slope off down the block
Ignoring the secured.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse for the Wednesday Muse "Summer Rain" prompt. Merlin is snoozing like a teenager across his pillow, waiting to see if any additional fries casually appear upon the desk or perhaps daydreaming about the car and the possibilities of magic food windows. I didn't bring him to the park this morning, where the ants and the deer were out in the early morning heat and the writing was deferred to this afternoon and an indoor desk. We're in the season of brief, strong afternoon thunderstorms and watching the weather for creeping tropical depressions that might weave themselves into hurricane spirals before coming ashore, hence the bullying storms above.

After last weekend's local author event, I've been thinking about how much I'd like to visit a poetry convention, tables full of poets and at least one room for reading, for poets to share their work, for those who write about poetry to share their thoughts on poems, and for readers to talk about where they encountered poetry, at first and now. Poetry can be protean, any genre, any language, any style. We use it to castigate ourselves, to pray, to sing. This feels like something that you could celebrate over a weekend, that you could share with an entire community, that you could turn into the kind of festival/convention that would spark more poems, that would inspire people to write and to read, to listen and to speak. Perhaps someone could bring one up here to the north side of Houston.

Hoping this week finds you well and well-inspired,
-- Chrissa