Caught In A Summer Breeze
Hybrid poem: the colour of your imagination prompt response
When you’re staring at the past
only you haven’t left yet and no one is looking back
When the hope for getting somewhere is gone
and the want for being known has vanished
Like a flag blowing in a horizontal plane
without the need to claim free…
dumb are the thoughts that try to interrupt — make sense of — rather than just be. I like looking up the river — not down — with the water coming right at me. From this stationary place I am neither stagnant nor absent-minded—what’s behind is already past — what was known has already drifted toward an earlier version of me.
I used to think that life was sewn into a tapestry of tales converging through a fine strand leading all narratives to completion — only, now I suppose what’s gone is dead — already been told. I am not a collection of things or a self known but a mystery of what hasn’t been — touched only by a momentary hold to place these words on keys — my meager attempt to find some kind of harmony.
Up ahead a solo white swan assures that all is a matter of flux — up next a white wish floats by having just departed fresh lips — like stillness in motion — caught in a summer breeze —lightening everything — the way a paintbrush white-washes over history when time goes blank and I have become less of me.
©Breathe & Be Still 2022
*So let me be clear, white does not mean white skin. It’s the color that lightens all other colors. This poem is a prompt response to J.D. Harms hybrid poem: Upward Mobility.
A very big thank you to the editors of Scrittura, Melissa Coffey and J.D. Harms for igniting the creative sparks again and again and for helping me to push past the rough drafts.
