My friend Rachel at Velveteen Rabbi has just introduced me to a weekly poetry site, Totally Optional Prompts. They post a prompt every Saturday, and poets respond on Thursdays. The prompt for this week is “Place”. Clearly, it matters to me… and now more than ever, while I don’t belong entirely to the place I live in. So here’s a thought.
In the mountains
I am at home on your limestone,
looking over one blue hill after another.
Falling leaves clear distance,
a blazon of red oak — I am here!
I am too tired to think
past the last of this season’s corn.
I am a guest seeking work,
and I love you,
your weathered wood,
your root stocks.
You call me back from an inlet
where I have written
so many strokes and long held
meetings of eyes.
From here I can see
I always choose clean heights.
Yet must you leave me
exposed and longing
exhilarated alone?
November 15, 2007 at 7:58 pm |
I like this! There is something about not being in the place you belong…I recognize that yearning.
November 15, 2007 at 9:30 pm |
Really pure thoughts, almost idylic – sounds like the perfect place!
November 15, 2007 at 10:14 pm |
Thanks for stopping by, sounds like it could be NE Iowa, a place I rarely go. I guess the other poets will help explain what I mean. I like your suspended ending * 32.
November 16, 2007 at 12:55 am |
I like your address of the mountains themselves, and I like the way the fourth stanza ends in a way that hints back at the third — “exposed and longing / exhilarated and alone” feels like a continuation to the strokes and long-held glances in stanza 3.
I also love the couplet “I am too tired to think / past the last of this season’s corn.” Which would make a wonderful opening, actually. I’ll stop there before I give in to the temptation to scramble your poem like a very delicious egg.
November 16, 2007 at 8:39 am |
You capture very well the experience of being in and on the mountains
November 16, 2007 at 4:30 pm |
“El arroyo de las montañas/ Me complace mas que al mar.” (Yo tambien.)
Another poetry community site well worth checking out is the new Read Write Poem.
November 16, 2007 at 10:58 pm |
“you call me back from an inlet where I have written so many strokes” This totally spoke to me. I belong near the ocean but live in the middle of mountains. Love this! ~Linda
November 18, 2007 at 9:45 am |
A fine evocation of place & conflicting emotions. Welcome to TOP.