Wild Nights “Out”
When we are young we brag and flout
our exciting evenings out,
but later on the joys of gin
start to wear our patience thin.
Lately, though I still go dancing,
I find an hour or two of prancing
is quite enough to slake my thirst;
and I must confess the worst.
When it comes to nights of sin,
my most exciting nights are “in!”
For the Weekly Writer’s Workshop, the prompt is “Wild.”
Leapin’Lizards
Iguanas, lizards, gekkos, turtles, toads and frogs and snakes
are not the things that we should fear in life, for goodness sakes.
These creatures in their own domains present no awful threat.
Just leave them where they are, for none were made to be a pet.
Our tame lives seek to steal the wildness from such natural things,
but wildness is not what curtailing wildness ever brings.
We must learn to leap ourselves––by entering our lives
and breaking free from prisons–our cages, pens or hives––
to buzz the world around us and see what we can find
to release us from our lethargy and the ties that bind.
If you do not know the way, just go and find a child
and follow him or her to places where they keep the wild.
The beach or any sandpile may serve to be your clues
of how to color your own life with more vivid hues.
A thing as simple as wet sand can take a child to
places where you had forgot you could be taken to.
Castle moats or rivers, dams, mountain tops or caves
huge mansions that are sacrifices to that evening’s waves.
Our wild imaginations are where we all should go
to find a little wildness when our lives are slow.
Go find a dog to walk with if you need a pet
then take him out to some wild beach–and both of you, get wet!
Wildness is for doing, not for sitting on a shelf.
So free the creatures pining there and find some for yourself!
(Click on first photo to enlarge and view gallery)
Those baby sea turtles are being set free, not being collected. Happy Leap Year!!!
(If you want to know more about the release of the baby turtles, go HERE.)
This poem was written partially in response to this strange strange news from my home town that was sent to me by two friends yesterday. Read about it here: http://www.chapala.com/webboard/index.php?/topic/60430-tiger-in-la-floresta/
It was also in response to the prompt “Leap,” in honor of this being the extra day in this leap year! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/leap/
Silvestre
The passion of the wallflower
pressed between the pages of
her garret room
may range farther
than the wildflower.
She hides it by day
under her mattress,
the only evidence of it–
ink bled into her fingertips.
Through the long night,
her pen spills her to infinity
with the wild stars
on the other side
of closed shutters,
immersed in waters
she has never stepped into–
plunged into by words
that she gives over to
night after night
after long year.
Words so sensual
that her father,
if he sees
from that dark Hell
any fair creator
would have sent him to,
must not be capable of haunting
or he would.
She imagines him
watching her submit
to a different lover
every night–
her back bleeding black
from the ink of the passion
he has pressed her to.
As if her submission
were the most dynamic
of all works;
as if no one
had ever said Yes
like that.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Third From the Top.” The Prompt: Go to your blog reader. Scroll down to the third post in the list. Take the third sentence in the post, and work it into your own post. (The line taken from my reader is the last italicized stanza of my poem. You can see the entire poem by Luci Shaw that it was excerpted from HERE.) And my poem is fiction, folks!
I woke up with the word “Silvestre” streaming through my mind. I knew that I knew what it meant, but in the end I had to look it up. Of course. It means “Wild” in Spanish. Even before I looked at the prompt, I knew this had to be my topic and as it turned out, it worked with the quote I was given. Thus, the name of the poem which might better have been named “Wild Words” but I like “Silvestre” better, and Patti, it is only coincidence that it is also our father’s middle name. I would never assign our father to Hell nor accuse him of the implications in this poem. Thus, this disclaimer when normally I feel no words should have to be explained.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 