24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
There is a Firefly in a bottle
Rattling
It wears a strange mask
Of wonder
As it zooms
back and forth
The heat of the cottage
Midsummer
Is unbearable
The tree-line barely visible
against the dark sky
The firefly lands
In the bottle bottom
Looking out into a strange world
Unfamiliar
It grows lethargic, lost
A prisoner of a child
Who will reject it’s porridge
On morning light
Unwilling to let it go
I got goosebumps
at midnight,
when he held me tight.
We looked each other
being lost in each other side.
millions of days are gone
Now he says
hold our baby’s finger tight.
Humankind stomps across our planet
leaving destruction in its wake.
Forests decimated,
species eradicated,
oceans and air polluted,
people starving,
dying.
Mother Earth cries.
“When will you ever learn, when will you ever learn?” 1.
Want trumps need, grows into greed.
More factories, more roads, more buildings.
More money, more of this, more of that.
We get what we want only to want more.
We have no joy in this wanting, in these gains
We compete to have the most,
without concern for those who have less.
Our human nature wars against our humanity.
“When will you ever learn, when will you ever learn?”
“It took a pandemic to show you the way
It took a lockdown to open your eyes
But will your minds, your hearts and eyes cloud over again
once ‘normal’ days return?
Or, will you see how I, Mother Nature,
can teach you how to live,
how to heal the planet.
Together, we can heal what you have harmed.”
“When will you ever learn, when will you ever learn.”
Painting image: Copyright Wendie Donabie 2019
Water rushes and rises
filling up the tub
heat flowing steam flying
squeak, now that’s enough
and then the smooth surface begins to ebb
with the touch of a button
the jets are kicking in
dip yourself in the water
melt your stress as you swim
The cottage hid behind the treeline.
A firefly circled my bottle of Stella.
It was good to breathe without the mask.
It was good to escape the heat and strange faces of the desert city.
The lethargy of summer in my knees,
The zoom from the cars zipping down the freeway fading with the day.
The curry porridge was bubbling in the slow cooker,
The kids won’t eat it. That’s ok. I will.
I am only hungry at night.
Hour 9, Prompt 9
The hummingbirds don’t fly this far north
and hemlock grows everywhere.
But maybe with a little time,
when the weather gets hotter,
and the storm clouds dry up,
the little birds can beat their tiny hearts
a little bit longer
to take the hemlock away.
I’m not afraid of spiders –
Maybe because they are so manipulative
and beguiling –
Maybe because of their silken webs –
Or because they are vulnerable if you stick
your finger through their webs
and they
swing away on a string and fold themselves into a ball.
But there was once a very large white spider
that intrigued me so much, and I got so close to it
and touched its body,
and I felt something pinch my pinky.
“Welcome to my web,
said the spider to the fly.”
Heat radiates above the tree line
As the coolness seeps in from the woods
to stir our lethargy
to revive us so that we may
sit in the twilight, outside the cottage
as the firefly leads the way.
Facebook added a seventh emoji a few months ago, the Care emoji
So now there are: Like, Love, Care, haha, wow, sad, and angry
What about a ‘nervous’ emoji, or a ‘feeling frisky’ emoji
Or ‘buzzed’, ‘dumb-ass’, ‘last straw’, ‘super-fucking cool’, or ‘hot-diggidy dog’
There should also be a way to pick two, like ‘Love and Care’, or ‘Sad and Angry’
What about three emoji’s, like ‘Love, haha, and Wow’
Each Facebook member should be able to make up their own emojis
to be used on their posts like labels on Blogger. I would have a ‘poetic dude’ emoji’
I would also have a ”drink!’ emoji, and ‘That doesn’t make sense’ emoji
Gammar nerds would get out of hand quickly—can you imagine;
”Check your spelling’, ‘Good time for the Oxford comma’, ‘Kill the passive voice’,
A ‘Peace’ would be cool though. Hey, how about a ‘cool beans’ emoji
I would use, ‘Totes’ all the time
The Storm Ann WJ White Shears of wind whinge up and around the ledges of mountains. Atop, cream-filled clouds pass lazily over meadows, gathering, waiting for the sultry heat to arrive and blend currents faster effort. Indeed, bend the currents out of place, heat the cumulous clouds until they are black like vulture wings. Fill them with particles of active humid molecules. Change their molecular structure to more. Create the nimbus blends that crack with future thunder, Bring the Gods to sample the storm. The rain perkily dances in flushing, gushing streams. Enlarging drops, Proving their prowess as missiles against gardens, metal conveyences. Shove them downstream, clashing with boulders. Rebounding the storm. Add the generating of lightning, gesticulating from the clouds as if ringing profanity from above. Change color schemes to violent life, to winds like wild griffins screaming. The bully storm starched in enormity. Hold your bolt high, then release. Threaten from flooded Skys. Now the gale climaxes roaring, as they clash against each other, Building the storm taller, a nimbi-cumulous monstrosity of fear, seeking to sanitize the air of its dry thirst forever. Force the violent expulsions, let your weakness disappear. Bring the cold above. Hail in summer, thrusting tornados, waterfalls created from the sky As the weather reaches out for more and more. Let a rainbow emerge to swiftly calm the madness, with violet to color the shadows, orange to spotlight fires on the ridge. Slow the choppy wind and tame it with hot tears falling upon the hills. Bring cooler water to otters arriving muddy slides amidst the hills. Terror gone from splashes of play. Breath a moment and separate the clouds. Oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules sooth between city streets, Umbrellas can be opened to provide a cool safety as winds calm. Rubber macintoshes sleeve the runoff so that children Can find puddles to splash in like seals, bears, and foxes. The rain sobs, then becomes a memory, flooding only flower pots. Sun breaking through the wind, opening the winds to teasing play. Soon it will vanish into pulses of water running the gutters. The stores will reopen, markets change again to talk and laughter. Bridges will calm, provide a bypass of passage for the ceremony of night, Long since planned against the Summer's reign.