SPRING TIDE, FORT CANBY NaPoWriMo entry for today.

I press my back into
receptive sand
and the sky is a vast cerulean sea
lounging above the sharper blue-gray
of the Pacific.
Sitka spruce are a patient punctuation
beside the cleft
where tides whisper and ring.
I am a still sentinel, singing
my silent chants to the
ocean's slow metronome.

This is a place to release, let go,
carve a channel for the new. . .
Hard feelings roll away
like the wise beam turning its circles
from the North Head lighthouse
balancing on its one wide leg
atop the rocks
that shave themselves into the sand
resting beneath my welcoming spine.

J. Pratt-Walter
(c) 2014

NaPoWriMo entry: THE FLIGHT OF SWALLOWS

The flight of starlings is
awkward and brown, too cumbersome
for their mediocre size.

   The flight of crows is
a heavy mood, a dark dream
reaching out for you at midnight.

   The flight of hummingbirds
is too terse to see, a short green life
that never meets oldness.

   The flight of swallows is
a smooth glissando of winged grace
awakening the ancient longing in your soul--
maybe like the beloved One
that left you behind in
his soaring arc.

   The flight of autumn geese is
a chain of aching beauty, lifting you along
on their sky-path south.

   The flight of memories
dances with all the bird-wings--
him being a swallow
and her, just another starling.

J. Pratt-Walter
4/14/2014

No Apologies

NaPoWriMo entry:



Plum and cedar shake out their pollen clouds,
the bending willow wears her
silver-green cat-toes--
Pollen is a plant's love sonnet circling
in the air.

Even if you can't love me
like a bee loves the deep blossom, still,
I love you like flying pollen:
Widely.  Honestly.
No apologies.


J. Pratt-Walter (c) 2014

14

Day Two of NaPoWriMo: The Unintended Poem

 Sometimes words mix themselves 
into strange concoctions 
that form a meaning all on their own 
without even asking me. Maybe 
when I didn't know I had anything to say
 and had no intention of trying to recall 
an angular past...
J. Pratt-Walter
2014

Day One, Nat'l. Poetry Month: HOPES AND APPLES

If you drill deep enough,
far below where apples like to decay,
you might find what you missed
at first-- an old gratitude.
Thanks, world,
for that boy in the strawberry-blond
aura, the one
with a smile that might have saved
a girl's small life
when only empty holes yawned wide
in her unspeaking heart.
Gratitude still rises there
with the waters of spring,
lifting from far below
the pond-lanterns of skunk cabbage
and the choiring frogs,
where hopes and apples
like to decay.


J. Pratt-Walter
(c) 2014