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Short Seasons

 Sharing today for Shay's Word Garden Word List #3. 


Can the Christmas wreckage of empty shelves
lean through shadows
rooting in rainy weekday puddles
in deep places where the road bends
toward the root-tatted sewers?

Can a splash stricken from this fresh print of daylight
tremble the neon stillness
of sports drinks in a cold closet
whose dim light hums automatic,
endless prayers?

I didn't quite get this right--I used too many of the words and the whole thing doesn't quite get at the sense that as the world spins back up after lockdowns and vaccines and the special kind of madness that comes with losing the everyday felting of one experience into another, we're not going to catch back up. We went out to look at Christmas lights and found the Christmas sections of most places empty of stock, rows Grinch-stocked with hooks but no ornaments. And that could be a good thing--we're apparently collectively the worst about plastic production, consumption, and waste--but it felt like we'd missed a step, waited too long, and are now living in the backward motion, as everything rolls backward toward the violent stop that will let us creep forward again. 

-- Chrissa 

Comments

  1. HelenDecember 6, 2021 at 5:47 PM

    You used the right words ~~~ and you persevered. Brava! I deleted my “woe is me” FB comment. Inexcusable. Back to the drawing board for this lady.

    ReplyDelete
  2. FireblossomDecember 7, 2021 at 4:02 AM

    Digging the "automatic" prayers! So happy that you did the list, Chrissa! Be honest now....did Arthur bark you into it? ;-) Don;t forget to leave your link in the comments so people can know you wrote for the prompt. If I hadn't seen the link on FB I would not have known.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DoraDecember 8, 2021 at 8:02 PM

    Can Christmas "lean through shadows" --- what an exquisite phrase, what an apt image of what we anxiously imagine during this covid/not-covid time --- as is "dim light hums automatic,/endless prayers" which is just genius, evincing a kind isolation that is not easy to dispel. You struck the notes you were going for, Chrissa, and made us understand that sense of "backward motion" that you mention.
    Pax,
    Dora

    ReplyDelete
  4. hedgewitchDecember 11, 2021 at 7:38 AM

    Using too many list words is my own particular devil with these, also, Chrissa, but I do think this poem works. Everything has a blended feel of crisis and suspension, just as reality does these days, and yes, it seems a splash *can* tremble the neon, and make the shelves hum in consumerist mantras, or hopeful placation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. qbitDecember 11, 2021 at 5:30 PM

    I loved it. Wouldn't have known it was a word poem if, well, I didn't know it was a word poem. "Can a splash stricken from this fresh print of daylight" is super Grover Lewisy.

    ReplyDelete

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