The 21st Century is Awake

“the century is going to sleep” – Stephen Dobyns, “Lullaby”

Let’s say a century is like a 12-hour day; it gets
Up at 6 AM knowing the first twenty years will
Last through about 8:30. No time to waste.
Launch some airplanes into skyscrapers and
Annihilate a city with hurricane and flood,
Blast wildfires across whole continents.
Yes, this century’s awake, wide-awake now.

Books Available
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Windmill Dreams

What was the noise that woke me from my sleep
intent and listening in a silent room?
No clash or clatter; a caress, a sweep
describes the sound that trembled through the gloom.
Moving across the bedroom wall, a form
illuminated only by the faint
lamps in the street. A harbinger of storm,
leaf-light and turning, restless as a saint
denied his martyrdom. I close my eyes,
remembering tall shapes on distant hills,
electric power drunk from moving air.
And on my wall, the shadow's newest guise:
metallic vanes of whirling, giant mills
swing low and brush against my tangled hair.

--for Read Write Poem's NaPoWriMo prompt #27: acrostic
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Azan

At first light the call comes:
Leave your beds and pray.
Lilting across the roofs
At first light, the call comes.
House windows light
Up as the faithful rise.

At first light the call comes.
Kneeling and prostrate
Hear how they murmur:
"Beloved, be with us
Allah, grant that we may
Remember you always."

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Changing Leaves

Colder nights and foggy dawns; the sun grows
hazy during days that shrink like squeezed
accordions. The chickadees in hedgerows
nod and chirp in smoky autumn breezes,
gossip of last winter's killing freezes.
Inky water seeps through gravel shallows
not yet frozen. Too-brief summer breezed
gazelle-like through the tall-grass prairie meadows.

Labor Day has come and gone. September's
easing out the door, its last good-bye
a scarlet banner in a charcoal sky.
Vermilion snowdrifts under every tree
erase the green from arbor heraldry.
Soon winter's flags will fly above red embers.

Miss Rumphius suggested an acrostic with an autumn theme for this week's poetry stretch. It turned out mostly trochaic. I think it's because it was easier for me to think of a word that started with the correct letter if that syllable was stressed-- eg. "gossip" was easy, but coming up with "gazelle" was harder. On the other hand, common words like "it" and "a" are usually not stressed at the beginning of a line-- but I didn't have very many lines starting with those letters.

In effect, making an acrostic sonnet introduces a third level of control: you have to make the line make sense, make the first syllable take the correct stress level, and make the first word start with the letter you want.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside