NaPM, April 25, 2020

[Quixilated]

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month, have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month.


Topic: Write a poem about hope. Include a color, and a word (or phrase) from your favorite song.
Form: any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[Todd]

Year After Year

If cut open, you could count
my regrets etched like rings
on a tree stump, parsing
blue skies from pain.
You are a phantom
limb to me. I reach out
only to grasp empty air.
The stump aches, a dark cut
weathered through the years
we’ve been apart
now more than together
Separation is an ax, a clarity
that comes too late. How is it I see
you as you were, as you never were?
Time is a liar. Yet, I hope
for a shoot to still break forth
to stretch upward to that place
of reunion, where rain clouds
are wrung out like a cloth
and the sky forever brightens
breaking into endless day.

[dukealien]

The Colloquy of Dragon and Eagle


Tell me what’s your hope
for your future
dragon dancer?

Dragons live forever
eagle man,
hidden or at large
chained or devouring the sun
a Dragon has
no need for hope.
What can you say to that
eagle man?

My hope’s an Eagle’s hope:
fly for a season
and a chick or two
soar with them just as long
as winds blow high
and rivers run
and mountains stand.
No longer.

And when your white eggs are thin
your fish all netted
what then,
eagle man?

Then mine’s
the hope of Dandelions
dragon dancer,
flying loose on every wind
taking root without permission
everywhere.

Mine too of course,
eagle man
so long as strokes of brush
are read.
But his heart was sore.

[Keith]

Hope

By the time you found seventeen,
just a kid with a crazy dream,
a seam that needed stitching
before it could be unpicked.
In the grey of the morning
something spectacular can dawn.

Repairing the spiders damaged web
you said its gets stronger every time,
each line crossed and wrought
a thousand variations on a thought.
A warmth in your stomach
brought by belief in yourself.

A whispered prayer beside a bed
a stolen flicker from sailors candle
enough to burn a hole on to the night,
an eye piece to a brighter place,
peer in and look down on hopes ocean
sail your boat to its golden shore.

And if you find yourself falling in
grasping at fragments of the sky
then land with your feet on the ground
place them firm and turn around
until you find the red center of the sun
where all of our dreams are shared as one.