30 Poems in 30 Days 2009: Day Seventeen
September 17, 2009 by J.C. Hewitt
You can tell it is mid September here in the Arizona desert because the temperature is topping out at a mere 97 rather than the 111 it was reaching just a month ago. I’m very much looking forward to mid-October, when the temperatures will only reach the high eighties and it will be safe to venture outdoors at noon. It is still a long time off, but I am picturing this as another year when I attend Christmas festivities wearing shorts.
Where I live certainly influences my poetry. Arizona has a reputation for being conservative and reactionary, but when people say that about Arizona, they really mean Phoenix. The Phoenix area has 70% of the state’s population and 80% of the state’s problems. The rest of the state is just along for the ride. Tucson, the city I grew up in and still almost live in, I’m thirty miles away and freeway close, is a somewhat laid-back liberal city where people tend to be accepting of just about anything that doesn’t directly harm other people. A harsh winter for us is three nights in a row below freezing. Summer is really the least hospitable time of year, and people deal with it by wearing less clothing and more sunscreen. If you wear a suit to work in Tucson, you are probably a lawyer, a salesperson or an undertaker. Everybody else dresses light.
As a consequence of where I live, I rarely write about snow. It does snow here occasionally. We get dusted about once every three years. When it does snow, it is interesting and the world kind of comes to a stop because people are completely thrown out of their normal routine. In that way, there is something to say about snow. Where I live though, I am far more likely to be caught in a dust storm than a snowstorm. I’ve dealt dust storms about five times this year, and because I’m not far from an overcrowded dairy, they tend to be pretty smelly storms. That is the world I live in.
Think about where you live and how it influences your view of the world, and by extension, your poetry.
Today’s Poetry Prompt
Write a poem that is set at or near where you live.
Alex and the Waterslide
Alex is five and still needs a floatation device
It is bulky and a little restrictive but he pays little attention to it
Alex bolts for the waterslide and makes his way up the long stairway
He is laughing all the way up
He shoots down the slide and gasps to hold his breath
Just as he hits the water
He struggles to swim to the ladder and the lifeguard helps him
Alex heads straight for the stairs again
My other nephews
Slightly older
Go up and down the waterslide as well
But they stop after a few minutes
Two hours later Alex hasn’t stopped
Every time he slashes to the bottom
The lifeguards immediately guide him to the ladder
And he is up again
There is no quit in him
We will have to pry him away
Crying
When we leave
Colonially Quaint
Sitting majestically
Lies a colonial and quaint
Cluster of buildings
After trekking up a slope
Peacefully surveying
Over the landscape
And the botanic gardens
Such lovely buildings
But such idiosyncrasies
Of having to climb up flights of stairs
And to connect to different parts
And then climb down flights of stairs
And ending up in no-through corridors
But never mind all that
It remains a lovely place
To be
Quirks and all.
Pottsville Beach, Late Afternoon
The shoreline is utterly altered after the storms
but summer is coming, we can get to the beach again.
Someone has partly restored the path that became a cliff
easing it into a soft hill of sand we can trudge down and up.
Others are here already, walking or fishing.
The waves come in now in opposing directions
turning on each other like the edge of half a whirlpool.
The shallows are all uneven; in places huge licks extend
reaching nearly to the foot of the cliff, in far beyond the rest.
This is a sea I don’t want to turn my back on.
But I do while I fossick for stones in the slush:
interesting shapes, beautiful colours, satisfying textures.
Here is a comma and here a heart. Some are marked with crosses
others circled by raised, contrasting rings. One is a pearl, translucent white,
others are black and smooth, shining like onyx.
Then everyone stops. We all stand still and gaze.
I’d heard two days ago there were whales about, seen
from the headland at Hastings Point, and now they are here
disporting themselves in leisurely ease, back behind the breakers,
cresting and diving, leaping and plunging.
A glimpse of graceful tail, a curving fin or a snout,
a sudden spume of white, a burst of foam. A silver glint
from the underside of a fin caught by the sun. And the sky vast,
pastel blue with long white feathery stripes of cloud stretching across.
The ocean sparkled, seeming to sing.
A cold winter morning
I know how the unknown looks
When nobody’s watching
When the sands shift beneath only wind
And the ocean mirrors nothing:
Not light, not air, not waves,
Just the wind and the wild
Beneath gray skies
Leah, that’s so beautiful!
This post is late for the topic as I play catchup…
If there was any quesiton, I live in Montgomery Alabama,
which was deeply embedded in slavery, the (U.S.) civil war and the Civil RIghts movement of the 60’s. Cotton and textile are still important, and the city, along with the entire south eastern part of the US is trying hard to reinvent itself.
But emotions (especially hate) run deep, and certain things can not be wished away. Hence the poem.
Southern Lies
They say the smoke has cleared away,
and the burnt out and gutted churches
have shiny brand new steeples now.
But the hate that lit the fire
still smolders in the hearts of those
who distrust all others of different race.
They say that segregation is gone,
outlawed and wiped away by bussing
and integration of public schools,
But the poorly funded public schools
play host to many black kids while
the private schools are filled with white.
They say the racial hate is of the past
and mixed neighborhoods are here to stay
and make nice under the capital dome
But when I walk in some neighborhoods
I am insulted for the color of my skin
and under threeat of death, am told to leave.
They say that things are better now
and try to sweep the pain of years long past
underneath the corner of the well worn rug.
But only when they stop the lies
and face the fact that hate runs deep
will yesterday’s wounds begin to heal.
Another excellent piece, James, which really nails it.