ocean

Mangrove

There is a heart-place

Of mangroves and oyster rocks

Sei Shonagon, Megan Willcox

Soft, quiet hollows of sand, like the scoops of a hip

A headland, like Scotland

All green and black

Where the sea rushes in

And sucks right back

Is a Beowulf Boudicca

Lurking deep

Below slimy kelp

dry salt smell in the heat

I’m afraid

If I go…

It might…

Disappear

Will it flip, mind twisting, turning, running, burning

Tunnel clear

Back here?

A forest path

Gravel and soft brown

Pineneedles where a

Russian scarf

Drapes, disintegrating down

A secret house

Forest sprites,

Where?

Do they come out at night?

Another heart-place for me

On the other side, through the trees

Today’s prompt/challenge was to write a Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide! I remembered a work colleague and how we were so into Sei Shonagon for a while. Then I thought of faraway places in the heart that make it beat faster. The place I often thought of as a refuge/ happy place is where I’m soon going to be moving to. So I’m wondering if I’ll have to invert that once I get there, and imagine myself back in Switzerland instead!

Photo: Claire Doble

Possibilities

 

See all those windows

I’ll never look out of

the way the rain stains

concrete like a tidemark

dispersed landocean

of sweetwater

a heartbeat, monitored

spikes and stalactites

mountains in the distance

that won’t be climbed again

if ever they once were

and fat fulsome blossoms

like cheeks stuffed with popcorn

springtime possibility,

impossibly lush

too wonderful to last

 

Today’s prompt: to write a poem of the possible. A a poem that emphasizes the power of “if,” of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world.

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash