Tag Archives: nativity

Fifth Element for dVerse Poets, Feb 26, 2025

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Fifth Element

That vessel formed from water and earth?
Air fanned the fire that gave it birth.
Then something came and filled me up
until I overflowed my cup
and flowed to other lands and climes––
spilling words to flow in rhymes,
verses, stories, volumes and
fabrications of mind and hand
that created each further world
that has continuously unfurled
from what came after the birth
of my body spawned by water, earth,
fire and air––something anew
born out of that primordial goo
that gave birth to all the rest,
then stirred me from the natal nest
with the blessed germination
of sparks of imagination
that infused each element
with spirit that was heaven sent.
What gave us words and poetry
was the element that gave birth to me.

for dVerse Poets Pub  the prompt is to write about our association with one of the four elements: air, earth, water, fire.

To see other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

Nativity

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Nativity

He met her in a tavern and invited her to stroll
with him in the garden to escape the clack and roll
of the dice on gaming tables that made conversation hard,
so they went to view flamingos in the verdant tavern yard.

Their talk was convoluted, far above the usual yawn
of “polite” conversation as they strolled across the lawn.
She had been to Bali and he had been to Nome,
and so they toured these foreign places, going there to roam

beyond the borders of this garden and this tavern and this town,
and when they reached the meadow, this was where he laid her down,
thus beginning a long story that ended here with me,
of how my father met my mother and how I came to be.

Prompt words today are volute, happenstance, yawn, flamingo, tavern, roll.  Image by Kristine Zanate on Unsplash

Nativity

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Nativity

It was some day, that day when light came into my world.
Reaching out my arms and legs as they came uncurled,
so many lovely colors bursting into sight.
All this brilliant pigment where formerly was night.

All the parts familiar still attached to me—
my ankle and my navel, my elbow and my knee.
But no longer together, curled into one tight ball.
I never knew that I could be so wide and tall.

Stretching out to fill this square I wonder when
I will be forgetting the curved world I’ve been in.
My mother now beside me instead of all around.
At other times she’s simply nowhere to be found.

My father’s arms around me—arms brand new to me.
All the other others coming to see what I may be.
Scratchy things now touch me—dry things and things with fluff.
Everything a new thing until I’ve had enough.

Then I find my power and make some kind of noise.
Soon I’m joined by other infant girls and boys,
and the whole room fills with sounds of our distress.
Very satisfying, I fear I must confess.

The nurses all come running, the fathers and the sisters.
The orderlies and doctors, the misses and the misters.
And when they lift us up, each one in different arms,
all our cries desist as they cater to our charms.

“Some day,” they’ve been saying, and now we are all here—
a fresh new crop of humans arrived for them to rear.
Once more we exercise our lungs and make each father cower.
Fresh to this new world, we have already found our power.

The prompt today was someday.