November Dailies

 

# 1 

Whole Worlds

Whole worlds pass through her hands

Some stain, some she drains, slowly,

Into paper jars she stuffs in  her desk.

#2

His Maker

Our galaxy is like a rainbow at night

I wear bandanas of all colors to say

Thank you for receiving them

On the other side of the water and the stars

My words soar away from us

Because the only bridge is flight

And breath the only support

When the sun comes up and the stars dissolve

I know that I'll be covered with inexplicable

Fur, my shirt like a starlit night

#3

Greenbean

Greenbean sings like the grumpiest angel:

The one who hit Heaven with the binder

of all the souls who carry minor infractions,

the ones who won't make honor guard wing

or the golden choir, and tripped hard

before beginning to inform each one.

But it's still Heaven, right?

So Greenbean sings.

#4

Midnight days sanded fine

Steel that sings with souls of pine

All the years the wood will tell

Melody's arc is that of time

#5

All the queen will say

is that her moves are legal

all animals are in her purview

and horses, too, are regal.

#6

I remember columns; I was placed

Near the sacred fire

And the memories lean away

My balance is wisdom

But folly lives and shies

from the flames.

#7

Her pattern was born on me.

My skin is a tapestry of her pink roses. 

What she remembers,

the horses on her bookshelves,

the soft pages and the blankets,

enameled barrettes and socks,

the square wash of sunlight;

all those dreams are fairy horses

still running.

#8

Among the paperwork was this calendar--

She had always been a traveler,

Braver than her holiday sweaters; 

She never called us stuck

But she left those flying women watching over

This small desk she'd brought from  home 

when her flight was called.

#9

My imagination is large enough

to carry me--the grasslands are wide,

and the winds slide down the mountains;

I'll walk them home

I'll fly my dreams above.

My yard is the earth itself

My imagination is large enough.

#10

The river drains, leaving the pews

beneath the arch of a forest in silence.

Have you imagined a boat?

Water comes from the heart pressed

firm against the chord.

Find a seat, put your throat to the oar.

Carry us onward, carry us over,

carry us through.
Sing.

#11

Careful, it is hot and the bowl delicate,

bone and sky and last years' field,

breathe across the surface, drink.

Peace, after the calling.

Tea, after the boiling.

#12

Tilt the world, not the  map, then lean--

It will leave the shape of itself 

For a mold for life or dreams.

What could the sticky years reveal

if you poured them in 

And a new world congealed?

#13

Pull the hooked weights from your grief

Spin the wool you gathered, dreaming

Weigh it down and drag the smoke

For the fish who grants the wishes

Swimming in the mist trees sigh

When they imagine dancing.  

#14

Today, I am grateful for the phone

and all the turkeys who called.

-- 

Gratitude in 19

Thank the world for the rain that woke the moonflowers, 

weaving a hope umbrella.

#15

No party -- no new dress, no shoes -- 

so thankful for that, and my mother's shirt,

and the shell my father had 

from GreatUncle Pete, the pirate.

Let the light fade in the kitchen window

Let the living room grow golden;

I will listen to the sea, and dance

and pour a cup of something warm

and raise a toast to the people 

who taught me to keep my sea legs

when I was adrift.

#16

I leave the backdoor open 

just for this: to invite the lizards

to explore the indoor plants;

to invite the butterflies

to the slosh of sugared tea; 

to turn from the page

to find a fawn, wondering

what happens next?

#17

I would give you a sword, said the waves,

if you were my daughter. 

But the sway of the moon drew them

far down the beach.

She had given her daughter herself

and she shone lemon-silver;

she will fight the darkness well

laughed the light over the tide.

#18

The pathway ends in tea time--

mad if you prefer, proper if you must--

always formal as the pinstriped woodland 

printed stark upon the sky.

And, with that, our November of daily prompts comes to an end. This month has encompassed NaNo, a bird fable (coming soon!), weekly poetry, and Thanksgiving. Although there was some sarcasm seasoning the thanks this year, as well as sorrow, there are several things to remember [uurrrgg, just swallowed a chunk of ice while thinking about gratitude--let's add that the ice chunk was small], including our wonderful WordCrafters writing group and our fearless (and tireless) leader Carrie, who provided these daily prompts and some of the weekly ones as well; my family doing well this year following a few minor surgeries during the pandemic; Arthur and Merlin, who are good writing & snuggle companions; my spouse the patient & creative cook who added scones & ice cream to his repertoire  this year; and, finally, finishing a draft that I was pretty sure I wouldn't start. Writing has carried me this far and I hope that as the work of pruning and shaping drafts continues, the gratitude & inspiration will still be fueling the effort. Along with caffeine. 

-- Chrissa

Float as You Breathe

 

Sing as you cross the dark. Float as you breathe.
This the beginning, testing speakers,
waiting out the thirsty and the distracted. 
Before the guide passes out 'space food.'
Before the guide begins the song.

Cheese from the mares that swim in the moon
Dry as the ice shaved into our monsoon.

Space, mother, planet, intelligent life, air--
we came from the bottom of the driest ocean
and lived on its lithic memory
until our disabsolution, until we drowned dry
to find the crest of the waves.

The word was given to me
before my breathing instructions,
before the glass was tested and polished,
before they cut down the first material
to museum standard and the fittings began.

The microphone shivers the dark;

they are explaining learning to swim.

When I couldn't, they said 

"We have a box for you.

You can be the first eyes looking up.

You can be the landing in the water,

the sinking to buoyancy,

the first bead from the capsule."

Sing as you cross the dark. Float as you breathe. 

Hope that everyone who celebrated this week had a good holiday and welcome to another response to The Sunday Muse's prompt. I was, this week, struck by the malaise of 2020.  I'm celebrating a minor NaNo victory and avoiding hanging holiday lights; listening to Merlin snore and thinking that sleep is a good thing, maybe, for other people. I should not write codas when I'm on the edgy side of tired. I should not think about coffee right now. But there are scones. Perhaps when my skills are such that I can extract the scones without waking the dogs, I will be at the level to contemplate midnight caffeine. 

You will never outsneak the ears, Mom. 

-- Chrissa 

Friday 55 -- Nov. 27, 2020

 

Gratitude is tenuous. The phone tries

pressing the day into connecting puzzle

pieces--washing dishes, cooking the turkey,

familiar arguments and ennui.

 

The cool front knocks out the power

without scattering the roses; 

we step into its damp porch-wake,

capsized into the chilly brightness.

And if it knocks again? 

Answer the back door, barefoot.

Peaceful and Sheepish

 

Horses chasing hogs in the suburbs?

Open a window, let the feeds scroll. Then,

bring me the holidays that I used to know!

Peace in the absence of understanding, 

in the overheated heart of preparation.

Pile china and glassware upon the table

emptied by those hoofbeats a street or a yard over.

Put the sheep in the middle of it, 

still living.

Let it stand for what we had and are,

for what we believe and how we act,

for mercy and for confusion.

For metaphors

and stuffed animals.

I will take a mug of cocoa to the front yard,

stand barefoot in the green grass

without anticipating their arrival.

And here we are again, another weekend in the tapioca timespace of 2020. This upcoming Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. and  we're going to be staying home, making potato salad (yea!!) and probably plotting out our first Christmas light trek of the year. There's a nebulous end-of-year feeling creeping in under the doors along with the fog, but it burns out by the middle of the day and you can feel, in the lingering heat and the unnamable anxiety, the year refusing to turn. The picture captures that so well--is it a joke? A metaphor? The beginning of a horror story or a comedy? It refuses to tell you. It's not going to spoil the twist. 

Participating in the weekly poetry and whatnot of  The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

-- Chrissa

But Always Dragons

 

I was born to skate, he said,

Handing her a photo of a man leaping

Headfirst into a building.

My great-grandfather.

He just didn't have a board, yet.

He had this idea of a helmet,

A desire to fly,

Someone to catch him in the act.

A reckless two feet of flight.

I can take care of your girls--

The one who lies about her birthmark

And the one who lies about her sister.

She passed around the photo.

Told us as he spoke the dragon wheeled

Over the invisible nighttime park,

Just as reckless but without impact.

She agreed to take the skater.

She told us this in that salon.

Two weeks later it was closed...this plague...

I know I don't believe in draconic daughters.

But...when I wake up at 3 am

Her story slithers away from my dreams;

I imagine a reptile warmed by distress;

A man putting on a helmet, laughter

Alleviating the world for a second;

And a woman falling in love

With something else. 

I imagine giving the photo back.

Greetings and salutations and welcome. I may not be convinced about dragons, but I'm almost sure that I'm living in an alternate reality and my family has finally and conclusively moved to the reality we left behind sometime in March. It's slightly different...maybe damaged in the separation? But still functioning. Anyway...if it wasn't so late in the month, I have a feeling the sisters might have formed the basis of a NaNoWrimo skeleton...and the skater would have had his reckless moment. And I would have gotten my knock-off Gormenghast, now, sadly, a broken-down collection of cheap tourist shops connected by a kiddie ride in which a person slides down track in a plastic bin decorated to look like ghosts flying through the building. It's not rated for safety, slide at your own risk.

-- Chrissa

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

Vigilance

 

We put the eternal flame to sea--a candle lit from a gas jet
sealed in a jar and tossed--Maria set it down, really--

into the scrim of water on the beach.

To sea with the idea of eternal vigilance.

To sea with the idea of loyalty to a campus.

As if, in the years to come, we'd look backwards

to the limestone walls, to the hidden patio on the roof,

to the eternal flame they'd just repaired

the summer before we arrived in the dorms,

to the basement room with all the mattresses,

to the first time we were faced with _______,

each of us keeping silent as we remember.

How long will a candle last on the shore? 

How long will friendship tether a girl?

So...yeah. Not sure where the above came from. My school years were pretty calm and they're long past, anyway. But there's something fragile about vigilance, an exhaustion already baked into the word. 

Surely we've all had enough of that, though. Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. 

-- Chrissa

Escape

 

Winter yarn, a golden scarf of moss, a song to spin
in sunlight cold as buried casks beneath leaves like fired clay;
festival time is come again.
 
Bring a chocolate bar for the goblins to gnaw—
a key, a toll, an iron gate left open—climb the hill, away,
leave silence to the throng.
 
A hare of hope, the boy in lace, the castellated clay
where the water crashes fierce beneath the elves’ unending ballad
and the moon’s stairway.
 
Festival time has come again as the tired fairy hill
Twists its spine of narrow stairs along its curving flank, waiting…
starved of hunter’s thrills.

Greetings and salutations. It's the first day of NaNo and my brain is in, well, denial. Also, to be honest, this week's upcoming (US) election is reinforcing that weird quarantine feeling of a constant, slow-motion, car crash. Therefore: fantasy. A brief end-of-year escape.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

-- Chrissa