Nanowrimo day 2: Roots

Did you know great tree's roots can reach down and out as high as the branches reach out and up?
It takes many rings of cold winters and hot summers to grow roots like those.
Great trees are home to pill-bugs and squirrels and woodpeckers, a host of multitudes of creatures.
It takes many rings of cold winters and hot summers to hold so much life.
A great tree has seen seasons change, can read the patterns of the wind
A great tree knows when the weather will cool, knows when to lay down its vermillion green crown onto the forest floor.
A great tree knows when to burst its buds for joy of spring, of life, of the return of the sun to the sky.
It knows how to breathe the air and breathe it out cleaner.

National Novel Writing Month day 1: A matter of elevation

Hello folks! Buckle in, strap up or otherwise restrain yourself and make sure you have your safety shears nearby. We're going for a ride! That ride is a poem a day for November. Here, without further ado, is day 1.

This poem was written thirty feet up in a sugar maple tree in a high wind.

Find high ground! 
This is the siren call, the screaming instinct in my gut
As I watch this sacred place flood.
A voice that mostly communicates in grunts and still consideres grubs to be fine eating comes up from deep with me and advises that I climb a tree posthaste.
When the tear-stained water kisses its way up the shoreline, where will I hide?
When tides of people with the same ancient, screaming instinct for survival
Come flooding up to find their own high ground
How can I open the gates for them? Offer them a hand up
To stand with me on a tiny island of dryness
How will the prehistoric part of my brain save me
When the ocean is everywhere I look? When everything is left to the whims of the moon and the scourges of the sea-birds?
Seeking meat to pick off the bones of the still dying?
When people are swept in waves off their land and forced against walls and into concentration camps?
Find high ground!
But how can I stand and watch the world sink into the sea?

Black Cat

I know it's early but my first nanowrimo prompt is "black cat"

I hope tomorrow a black cat crosses my path and brings four years of bad luck cascading down on my head.
I hope tomorrow all the four leaf clovers shrivel and die under my feet as we dance on the grass.
I hope tomorrow I open an umbrella indoors and dance until it rains, pouring sweet water across our face as we look up to the heavens, wondering who blessed the world so we met each other.
I hope tomorrow I break a mirror while I'm walking underneath a ladder with an upside-down horseshoe hung on the top.
Kiss me under this ladder surrounded by the glittering shards of our old lives.
I hope I never get the bigger half of the wishbone
I hope the only rabbits I find don't even have feet.
'Cause baby, when I'm with you nothing can bring me down.

Hang the moon

You're so cute that I wish you came in gift wrap, just so I could unwrap you and squeal like a child on Christmas morning.
You're cuter than an anthropomorphized robot looking disappointed.
You're so cute I want to stick you in a muffin tin and munch on you while you're still too hot. I can't even wait for you to cool down.
You're so cute my roommate's Labrador puppy told me she was jealous of your smile.
You're so cute I would hang the moon in the sky just for you.
You're so cute I wonder if all the stars in the galaxy might look more beautiful arranged in the shape of your face.

I wouldn't bring you the moon

The thing is I didn't plan to feel this way.
This summer I was fine.
I counted the stars to the sky and I marveled at the constellations
I thought your eyes were like the sky on a clear day
But I wouldn't bring you jewels from the deepest crevice of the ocean.

But after last Friday
I think about the way you run your hand through your hair when the sun comes up
And I think about the shape of your eyes when the sun goes down

It's just that I really liked the ways the stars look
Galaxy spread across the sky
And now I wonder
Might they look better arranged in the shape of your face?

I was so happy on dry land but
Now I'm thinking the bottom of the ocean isn't so far away after all.

Tonight she missed you

Tonight she missed you so bad it hurt, physically.
Her intestines cramping in pain, pinpricks of pressure in her eyes.
Something crawling out of the depths of her throat.

Tonight she listened to Rachel Patten's "Stand by you" a total of fifteen times on repeat
Which, given that the video is almost four minutes long
Is a total of nearly an hour
Of a song that makes her want to cry.

Tonight she told herself It's getting better on repeat
She did not count the number of times
Whispered like a mantra into her mourning gut.
Tonight she did not believe herself once.

She thought about the mountain goats line "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you/ And that you are standing in the doorway."
And she believed that.
She has written this poem three times in her head,
And twice deleted it on this computer screen.
Forgive her,
It seemed so self indulgent.
So full of self pity.

And you're not there, standing in her doorway.
She has not checked once
But she knows you are one world a way,
Three hours before her.
No mater what she hoped.
You can't lend her your wings from across the world.

She wishes you hadn't changed her so much.
That thought also makes her intestines hurt.
You're not standing in her doorway.
It's three in the morning and she misses you.
Forgive her.

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

And I got out of bed and descended the stairs
Smiled, and kissed the gentle morning airs
Heard the birds singing their fond morning wishes
Went to the sink, and there . . . I saw dishes!

That sweet, dewey, sun-speckled, cloud-dappled morning
Came to a sharp sudden halt with no warning
My leisurely morning was pushed past the brink
The greatest of tragedies, dishes in the sink!

I wonder, dear friend, should these dishes I wash
For if I do then my skink will be spotless
And then if I don't they might sit here all day
And draw in fruit-flies and stink and just stay!

And please know that I'm sad and I'm not just nit-picky
When dishes are dirty I feel deeply icky
It's hard when they're dirty to feel like I'm home
And it's so deeply awful that I'm writing this poem. . .

From a place of real love, and good honest discourse
I know that it's hard to keep clean a shared resource
But just know it brings up some bad places I've lived
Where no one else cleaned, only I did.

I don't think this poem will convince you to clean
The dishes, or change this filthy, piled, fruit-fly'ed up scene
I don't know if this letter will force you to rethink
The way that you up and left dishes in the sink.

This letter's a plea, and a futile one
This letter's a jab, and it's made in good fun
But maybe the next time you'll pause and consider
Do you want to be the subject of another open lettter?