“Who sings in the deepest water in the abandoned lagoon?”
—Pablo Neruda
Answering Neruda
Who is the one who
sings my dreams here
in the velvet shade of
the river’s guardians ?
Deepest secrets are told here.
Water, the mother of us all,
in league with
the
abandoned voice of this
lagoon’s ministry.
For dVerse Poets Pub. See the challenge HERE.
Read more responses to the challenge HERE.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Hop
Scotch
“How green is blue?” the child asks,
“What is the taste of pink?”
A prodigy koan-master
with a novel way to think,
such problems keep a child’s mind
engaged in matters other
than all the daily problems
of a father or a mother.
No spider ever stumbles
when spinning out her strands,
for the feet she walks around on
are really only hands.
No specter of a problem
ever plagues a goat.
He simply feeds upon the world
and lives his life by rote.
And so it is with children.
They go from thing to thing
with no worries of the outcomes
that their acts might bring.
They leave to human adults
the worries of such things
and simply live with pleasures
that every new day brings.
Prompts for today are “How green is blue?” spider, stumble, specter and goat.
Ocean Koan
The dolphins ride in on the music,
but why did they come here?
Did they seek to lend their harmonies
to a music new and queer?
Did they soar in on its melody,
come in on a riff,
drawn by its dissonant whistle—
a mere beckoning whiff?
Whatever the dolphins are hearing,
whatever they’re trying to reach,
we don’t understand their language
as they lie stranded on our beach.
Perhaps we divert them with towers
that speak in a tongue their own,
and though it’s not our intention,
our messages form a koan
that they are driven to answer
as we’re drawn to outer space,
pulled to find our others
in an alien clime and place.
We believe we are harmless and loving,
at peace with their watered dreams;
when in truth we are drying their world up—
ripping it at the seams.
We send out the signals to pull them
to where they should not be,
like fairytales told to children
that draw them to our knee—
We turn our backs to the seaward window,
seal our ears to their keening tones
as the dolphins swimming landward
pave our beaches with their bones.
The prompt today was believe. As I am trying to get a book together, I’ve found an excellent way to meld these efforts with my blog. As the prompts come in, I look for an older poem written to the same prompt and spend the time editing it rather than writing a new poem. This one has changed a good deal. If you want to see the original, go here. Let me know if you like the original better.
I woke up early this morning and while I was waiting for the prompt, a dolphin swam into my consciousness and prompted this tale. While you are waiting for me to write a poem about the sense of smell, (today’s prompt), please be content with this one written about another sense:
Ocean Koan
Ocean Koan
The dolphins ride in on the music,
but why did they come here?
Did they seek to lend their harmonies
to a music new and queer?
Did they soar in on its melody,
come in on a riff,
drawn by its dissonant whistle—
a mere beckoning whiff?
Whatever the dolphins are hearing,
whatever they’re trying to reach,
we don’t understand their language
as they lie stranded on our beach.
Perhaps we divert them with towers
that speak in a tongue their own,
and though it’s not our intention,
our messages form a koan
that they are driven to answer
as we’re drawn to outer space,
pulled to find our others
in an alien clime and place.
We believe we are harmless and loving,
at peace with their watered dreams;
when in truth we are drying their world up—
ripping it at the seams.
We send out the signals to pull them
to where they should not be,
like fairytales told to children
that draw them to our knee—
We turn our backs to the seaward window,
seal our ears to their keening tones
as the dolphins swimming landward
pave our beaches with their bones.
I am not an expert on sonar or other communication technology. If you want to hear more on the subject, go here: http://www.earthportals.com/beachedwhales.html
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 