Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Evidence/Clues

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“There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.” 

― Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton

"Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home."

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Midweek Motif ~ Evidence/Clues

I nearly called this prompt "reading the signs"~so go with that if you wish.   Clues might be more fun, and lots and lots about evidence is in the news these days.  Do we seek these signs, clues, and evidence "to create order out of chaos" as Will Shortz says (see quote above)?  Or are we passing the time in game mode, entertaining ourselves? 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem with one or more signs, clues, or pieces of evidence in it ~ and express where they lead.

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Against the Evidence

BY DAVID IGNATOW

As I reach to close each book

lying open on my desk, it leaps up   

to snap at my fingers. My legs

won’t hold me, I must sit down.

My fingers pain me

where the thick leaves snapped together   

at my touch.

                       All my life

I’ve held books in my hands

like children, carefully turning

their pages and straightening out   

their creases. I use books

almost apologetically. I believe

I often think their thoughts for them.   

Reading, I never know where theirs leave off   

and mine begin. I am so much alone   

in the world, I can observe the stars   

or study the breeze, I can count the steps   

on a stair on the way up or down,   

and I can look at another human being   

and get a smile, knowing

it is for the sake of politeness.

Nothing must be said of estrangement   

among the human race and yet

nothing is said at all

because of that.

But no book will help either.

I stroke my desk,

its wood so smooth, so patient and still.   

I set a typewriter on its surface

and begin to type

to tell myself my troubles.

Against the evidence, I live by choice.

from

 Akiba

BY MURIEL RUKEYSER

THE WAY OUT (an excerpt)

The night is covered with signs. The body and face of man,

with signs, and his journeys.     Where the rock is split

and speaks to the water;     the flame speaks to the cloud;

the red splatter, abstraction, on the door

speaks to the angel and the constellations.

The grains of sand on the sea-floor speak at last to the noon.

And the loud hammering of the land behind

speaks ringing up the bones of our thighs, the hoofs,

we hear the hoofs over the seethe of the sea.

All night down the centuries, have heard, music of passage.

Music of one child carried into the desert;

firstborn forbidden by law of the pyramid.

Drawn through the water with the water-drawn people

led by the water-drawn man to the smoke mountain.

The voice of the world speaking, the world covered by signs,

the burning, the loving, the speaking, the opening.

Strong throat of sound from the smoking mountain.

Still flame, the spoken singing of a young child.

The meaning beginning to move, which is the song.

Music of those who have walked out of slavery.

Into that journey where all things speak to all things

refusing to accept the curse, and taking

for signs the signs of all things, the world, the body

which is part of the soul, and speaks to the world,

all creation being created in one image, creation.

This is not the past walking into the future,

the walk is painful, into the present, the dance

not visible as dance until much later.

These dancers are discoverers of God.

 . . . . 

(Read the rest of this amazing poem, and listen to the poet's recording HERE.)

How I Learned Bliss

BY OLIVER DE LA PAZ

I spied everything. The North Dakota license,

the “Baby on Board” signs, dead raccoons, and deer carcasses.

The Garfields clinging to car windows—the musky traces of old coffee.

I was single-minded in the buzz saw tour I took through

the flatlands of the country to get home. I just wanted to get there.

Never mind the antecedent. I had lost stations miles ago

and was living on cassettes and caffeine. Ahead, brushstrokes

of smoke from annual fires. Only ahead to the last days of summer

and to the dying theme of youth. How pitch-perfect

the tire-on-shoulder sound was to mask the hiss of the tape deck ribbons.

Everything. Perfect. As Wyoming collapses over the car

like a wave. And then another mile marker. Another.

How can I say this more clearly? It was like opening a heavy book,

letting the pages feather themselves and finding a dried flower.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ the Wall.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flood

The Waving Surface of the Autumn Flood, Ma Yuan - Water Album - circa 1160

“I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!” 
― Lewis Carroll

“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, 

which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” 
― Susan Sontag

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 
― Fred Rogers

Monsoon in India 2017
(So many have lost everything and died in floods, I found it hard to choose a picture.)

Midweek Motif ~ Flood

Flood in metaphor is often a positive, delightful gift and surprise; whereas flood in reality is often devastating, especially when disaster preparation is missing.  When the idea of flooding enters poets' hearts, when we are flooded with it, we are prepared with the tools of capture and taming even if we are overwhelmed.  So where to begin today? With an actual flood and its stories?  Or with the concept overpowering the will?  You decide.

Your challenge:  
Write a new poem with a flood motif 

and post it below.

The Art Of Drowning

by Billy Collins

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

The Flood 

by Robert Frost

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.

Just when we think we have it impounded safe 

Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),

It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.

We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;

But power of blood itself releases blood.

It goes by might of being such a flood

Held high at so unnatural a level.

It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.

weapons of war and implements of peace

Are but the points at which it finds release.

And now it is once more the tidal wave

That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.

Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

Arroyo: Flash Flood

BY JOHN UNTERECKER

The canyon walls close in again,

slant light a silver glare in brown water.

The water is only knee deep, but when the boy reaches the

   boulders—

purple dark, silvered by the smash of brute water—

water will tear at his chest and arms.

The walls of the canyon are brilliant in late light.

They would have glared red and gold for his drowned camera:

splashed blood to his left, to his right a wall of sun laddered

   with boulders.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

A Leak in the Dike

BY PHOEBE CARY

A Story of Holland
 . . . . 

But where was the child delaying? 

      On the homeward way was he, 

And across the dike while the sun was up 

      An hour above the sea. 

He was stopping now to gather flowers, 

      Now listening to the sound, 

As the angry waters dashed themselves 

      Against their narrow bound. 

“Ah! well for us,” said Peter, 

      “That the gates are good and strong, 

And my father tends them carefully, 

      Or they would not hold you long! 

You ’re a wicked sea,” said Peter; 

      “I know why you fret and chafe; 

You would like to spoil our lands and homes; 

      But our sluices keep you safe!” 

But hark! Through the noise of waters 

      Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; 

And the child’s face pales with terror, 

      And his blossoms drop to the ground. 

He is up the bank in a moment, 

      And, stealing through the sand, 

He sees a stream not yet so large 

      As his slender, childish hand. 

’T is a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, 

      Unused to fearful scenes; 

But, young as he is, he has learned to know 

      The dreadful thing that means. 

A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart 

      Grows faint that cry to hear, 

And the bravest man in all the land 

      Turns white with mortal fear. 

For he knows the smallest leak may grow 

      To a flood in a single night; 

And he knows the strength of the cruel sea 

      When loosed in its angry might. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

🌏

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 
visit others in the spirit of the community—

Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be "Nature: Her Words."

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults in the Lives of Children

Children give carnations to parents on Parents' Day in South Korea

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, 
my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. 
You will always find people who are helping.” 
― Fred Rogers

“Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise 
healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. ” 
― bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody

“I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.” 
― Barack Obama

The International Day for Protection of Children, Children's Day,
is celebrated in many countries on June 1st, though the date varies.

Midweek Motif ~ Parenthood

Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults 

According to Wikipedia:  

Parents' Day is a holiday combining the concepts of a Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day.  The United Nations proclaimed June 1 to be the Global Day of Parents "to appreciate all parents in all parts of the world for their selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship.".^[1] It is the same day as International Children's Day.

When I taught high school English, it was easy to tell which students suffered from a lack of nurturing adult presence in their lives.  At times these children needed my attention more than they needed an English lesson. I wondered if spending an hour a day with children in classes of more than 30 students was anything like parenting.  Could parents see 170 children a day, even if only for an hour?  My own parents struggled financially early on and were too angry and scared to be consistently loving until I was a pre-teen.  I feel love and gratitude for them now. 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem, in which you take on the voice of a child with real or ideal adults parenting them.  

I Go Back to May 1937

Related Poem Content Details

BY SHARON OLDS

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 

I see my father strolling out 

under the ochre sandstone arch, the   

red tiles glinting like bent 

plates of blood behind his head, I 

see my mother with a few light books at her hip 

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, 

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 

sword-tips aglow in the May air, 

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   

. . . . 

Read the rest HERE.

Lullaby in Fracktown

Related Poem Content Details

BY LILACE MELLIN GUIGNARD

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.

You know that Mama loves you lollipops

and Daddy still has a job to lose.

So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos

loud and louder from the mountaintop.

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes

and dance the polka with pink kangaroos,

dolphin choirs singing “flip-flop, flip-flop.”

Hey, Daddy still has a job to lose — 

. . . . 

Read the Rest HERE.

Driving My Parents Home at  Christmas

BY ROBERT BLY

As I drive my parents home through the snow

their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.

I call over the cliff

only snow answers.

They talk quietly

of hauling water of eating an orange

of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.

When they open the door of their house they disappear.

And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it 

through miles and miles of silence?

They sit so close to each other; ­

as if pressed together by the snow.

***

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 

visit others in the spirit of the community.

                       

 (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be - Commitment)