What can you do?
I invite you to write a poem about beauty and love, whatever that is for you.
An example
Below is a poem I wrote about my time in Nepal and India. The memories still hold a deep sense of knowing about life and acceptance of the beauty it brings us in the most profoundly unexpected ways.
Stopping to watch the tent houses,
Reflecting off the liquid mud,
Like a smudged painting.
Above the rooftops, mountains cut
Like a scalpel through the plastic haze,
wrapping around the city’s rim.
For months I have watched women worshipping
Water thrown into the air with their
washing,Wind blowing sails into their saris,
Blurring the mundane,
Children clicking tongues
Sliding along the water.
On this day, men encircle the flame, blazing
from the concrete slab underneath the
bridge,
Struggling for breath with each step,
Pushing each other forward, whileA baby is wrapped in linen
Tied like a gift with rope
And attached to a brick
Until later, in the boat, rowed to the
middle
Handfuls of ash thrown like seeds in a barn
yardFall like dust onto the surface of the river,
Dissolving the image of the village,
As the baby is lowered like an anchor
Into the river.
DUMB DEAD
ReplyDeleteSky aqua innocent
a death has surprised the sea
barely a kick of splashing silver
it submitted to the wake of its own death- throw
Hauled in from the last violent dance
man meets death
in grotty clumsiness
the stench fills the heavens
*
The butcher is borne from the man
Queenfish eye goggles
dumbdead
still as a reef
knives and blades foxtrot
the clouds refuse to unburden their fill
*
He presents the life on a Woolworths plate
in gladbags
what was whole
is fractured out of grace
into the guts of gluttony
the fridge gulps up the rest
Two seagulls on Whitelady funeral duties arc aloft
circling the stench in the cockpit
a lazy grey submarine cloud
sags sleepily but knowingly to the horizon.
*
Flashing Port Channel Marker is stupid to the fact
The resort starts to shine its festive lanterns beyond
we are triumphant in a grim sort of way
two nights into a baby new moon slither
A poem is born.
*
Katherine Pratt
Gloucester Passage
June 2012.
I published Dumb Dead on Katherine's behalf. We share a common love of literture, reading and writing.
ReplyDeleteWe are currently coauthoring a novel. I'm glad we are working together, she is such a beautiful writer.