The Boomerang That Came Back

As with writing, learning to throw a boomerang requires perseverance and discipline, the subject brought up this week at Poets and Storytellers, the power of discipline.  As it has an important, if symbolic, place in my novel, and in anticipation of my April 2nd release date, I thought I'd repost the poem I wrote back when I was first throwing the idea for a novel around in my head. (No pun intended.) 

Some of you may remember the G-Man and his Friday Flash 55 challenge to write fiction with a plot in 55 words. He inspired me to write flash poetry.  You could say, in a convoluted way, that he inspired me to write Let Evening Come.

The birth of a novel in 55 words.

Even as a child, she was drawn to the night
when the air was soft and fraught with life.
He, too, a child of twilight—
mysterious boy boomerang in his belt
Was my father’s he said,
dog circling, divining the night air.
Fingers entwined, he taught her to throw
so it would always come back.

The Newspaper City

We walk to mass along sidewalks
slick with mist from the ocean bay.
Hulking shapes huddle in doorways
where the sun won’t ever shine
to shiver the whole night through
under newspaper blankets.
 
We hasten into church to kneel and pray
with Asian, Latin, and Creole speakers
as incense wafts over the pews and candles twinkle
like the flickering of the holy spirit
descending on the fortunate.

 

With the transubstantiation of altar bread and wine

there’s a rush from the back for the body and blood.

Confused at the lack of decorum

  (do they fear the chalice will spring a leak?)

we ease our way into the jostling line of supplicants

like automobiles jockeying for an off ramp.

 

With a finger dipped in the font at the door

we exit into the misty morn of a cash-strapped city.

Beggars await us on the steps with their outstretched cups.

Father always dropped a five in the tin can of the gaunt man

who sat wrapped in wool at the top of the exit ramp

on trips into a different city.

 

We walk back to the hotel

past darkened storefronts and empty streets.

Silent except for the rustle of newspapers. 

Written for dVerse in memory of Kurt Cobain, the legendary alternative rock musician whose birthday was this past Tuesday. Nirvana's lyrics were known for metaphor and emotional depth. Challenged to use lines from one of the songs posted in the prompt, I chose a couple that would fit this poem.  Check out Melissa's post at dVerse for more on the enigmatic Cobain, photos and lyrics. And the poets at What's Going On who've asked us  to write about "Color" so taking liberty, as this is more about the absence of color.  There are other more beautiful poems about color passing through so head over. 

I Saw A Ghost Today

 

I saw a ghost today.
A shadow in the shrubbery
a lurker behind the shed.
A floater in the corner of my eye
or am I growing a cataract
like everyone I know
mistaking angels for ghosts
seeing something where there’s nothing.
 
My father said he had a guardian angel
and his name was Joseph.
Father talked to Joseph.
Such intimacy, like the whisper of a lover.
Maybe I have one too.
 
Call me a cynic—I looked it up.
But why wasn’t Joseph watching over him
when he lost two fingers in an auger.
Or when he rammed a nail up his foot—
a rambunctious boy—
and nearly died of blood poisoning.
 
I thought I saw a ghost today.
An anomaly in the fog
A lurker in the lilacs

When in the doorway bloomed.

Do I just flat out ask—

Hey! What’s your name?

Written for Shay's Word Garden using words from her word list taken from "The Waste Land and Other Poems" by TS Eliot.  And for d'Verse's Open Link Night (with a little twist of Whitman's lilac). And it's a secret (for Poets & Storytellers United) I guess I don't mind telling now as my father is with Joseph.
 
 

The Flow Of Water

Waking up in the lowlands with the murmur of the teakettle, a pour-over coffee, and a ticking clock. Within a short drive of Lake Huron and a stone's throw of the creek that trickles into the Black River that flows into the big lake which rushes to the ocean. 

Contemplating this business of publishing, royalty gigs and division of the pie with so many forks, and me with nothing but words in my head, phrases and ideas, passion and pain, spinning, weaving, plotting, scheming. 

Why do I wake up in the middle of the night? Thinking about the old man on the tractor and the woman with the broken broom, the man who trekked over a mountain with his youngest on his back to stay ahead of the soldiers, and the teen who enlisted for glory only to stowaway on a boat for foreign lands. Then there's the biologist who lives in a tent and studies the die-off of amphibians, and the reporter who only wants a story but comes face to face with a second chance at love.

Beyond our yard and across the pasture there runs a creek, which flows into a river that crosses the plain and enters the ocean. Currents collide, the Labrador meets the Gulfstream to merge with the Canary to circle a globe without borders. 

One story I wrote that's out of my hands but still won't let me sleep is about an Indigenous son who lost home and family and a motherless farmgirl who is simply lost.

Which brings me to the end and mention of my favorite modern invention which Rommy at Poets and Storytellers asks us to write about. Has to be the Universal Book Link.

A coming-of-age story in times of distress available now at  Your Favorite Digital Bookstore 

And This Is What I Know

In the quiet splendor of a predawn morn
the moon gilds the hoophouse in shiny opulence.
Lace-riven cloud formations circle the sky
with the moon at their apex high above the earth
circling quiet, like a giant snow globe.
How could anyone have ever thought this world flat?
And I, an inconsequential ant of a being
invade the quiet on a shuffle across the snow
in my husband’s boots and a hand-me-down coat
and my daddy’s hat with the flashlight
of my mother’s trepidation
in my pocket just in case.

How's your life today on Planet Earth? the poets at  What't Going On? ask. "Those of us who write frequently might give ourselves a break on days when we simply show up."

As I once heard a wise person say, half of life is showing up."