For today’s prompt, write a seasonal poem. This should be a snap for haiku poets; after all, inserting seasonal words is a rule for the form. However, you don’t have to write haiku to write a poem that references or happens in one of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Pick a season or include them all.
I didn't want to write a rhyming poem
today, even though that's been the mode for my poet mind since the
beginning of this challenge. For this prompt, I opened Writing Down
the Bones and read the chapter titled A New Moment. In
this chapter, she writes about how it is important not to rest long
on our successes or failures, but to keep the pen moving, to keep
writing.
I found inspiration in the lines that went: “Continue under all circumstances. It will keep you healthy and alive.”
I love that. Creativity is a force that helps us meet challenges. It helps us work through insecurities and anxieties. It gives us hope
and helps us meet our grief eye to eye. Goldberg goes on to write about
not needing a reason to continue beyond our own will to create. Creation is reason enough.
So
here is my seasonal poem, nurtured into existence by Natalie
Goldberg, the small birds nesting on our patio, and a time I climbed
Gwanaksan Mountain in Seoul, South Korea.
Each to Its Own
Suns rise
Kingdoms fall
Hearts break
Birds nest
In the spring,
new buds bloom
In the fall,
they gray
and wither
You may have stood atop
Gwanaksan
You may have flung
your arms wide
You may have been
an echo loud
against the wall
of time
It is not the same mountain now
New rains fell
bearing stones
and seeds
and sand
At mountain's base,
the city springs:
Each day new
and tomorrow old.
Yet the young
walk her streets
Alive and amazed.
From space we see
the churning veils
of illusive storms
Our cities etched
in the face of earth
like sandcastles
in the rain.
Season after season
we spin and spin
as we have always spun
in the dance
of the earth and the sun.
