Why I Am Not a Gardener

Little white flutterers,

I loved them, dancing

all over our garden.

My Dad swore at them

and told me they were not

butterflies, they were moths.

Cabbage moths, he said,

pests out to destroy

all his lovely vegetables.

I still welcome them

in their hordes, still like them

better than cabbages.

For prompt 29 of 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we were to write a poem about a flower named after an animal, or a bird or animal named after a flower. I hope an insect named after a vegetable is close enough!

The First River

The first river you paddle runs through the rest of your life. It bubbles up in pools and eddies to remind you who you are. — Lyn Noel

Frothing rapids between high banks of rock

cascaded down into a wide, flat bay.

That water seemed silk-thin on the surface,

sheer and pretty, though we knew it was deep.

The little yachts rode serene at anchor,

their white triangles pointing to the sun.

In sunlight my river glinted silver,

dazzling the eyes with flashing sparks of light.

Then it wandered down its long, winding way

to the ocean, to George Town and Bell Bay.

And on the way there were many beaches,

including my nearest, Gravelly Beach.

The stones underfoot were smooth and golden.

The water was body temperature.

I was a shy child, skinny and awkward,

but I felt that the river understood

as I paddled and splashed and tried to swim.

I felt that it held me, kind like a friend

near the earthy banks with reeds and tree roots

and the tiny fish that tickled my toes.

I am far away from my first river.

I have lived in many places since then. 

But always I must live by a river —

a river and some mountains — for my home.

For dVerse Poetics — It's Quotable.

(Yes, this is the same opening quote that I used two posts ago. I really did want to write about my first river, after all. It was the Tamar, in Launceston, Tasmania.)

That Smell

That smell when I opened the cupboard tonight

linked me back to my past and my further past.

I am a young mother in her kitchen.

I am a child in my own mother's kitchen.

I was making myself a cup of cocoa

to take with me to my bed, to help me sleep.

The night was fading at last from hot to warm.

The cupboard released aromas: tea, coffee,

sugar, and the cocoa's chocolatey waft.

It was all subtle. You could include paper —

that fine, fresh scent of clean paper, barely there.

All of these scents together were faint and light.

But they were enough. Enough to connect me

back to selves who I used to be. The same food —

no, the same drink — unchanged through generations

of my family, and other families 

in English-speaking homes where cocoa is drunk,

throughout the world, becomes link, becomes message. 

Or where tea is drunk, or coffee. Where there is 

a cupboard, kitchen cupboard, with wooden doors.

Some household where all the habits, all the smells

combine in a continuous way of life;

and cocoa made with milk and drunk with sugar

is what you have at bedtime to help you sleep.

A message from the past, from my ancestors!

And from my past selves to the me I am now.

It is a good message. It has no content 

except itself, its existence. The message 

is the message. "Continuity," it says, 
and, "Lineage". And it seems to say, "Comfort".

April 2014 PAD Challenge, day 3: a message poem

Addition / Subtraction: the Mathematics of Loss

You

are woven

fast into my fabric.

How shall I unravel you? Yet I must.

Your thread has stopped — no sudden cutting short; it is completed.

A new, plainer pattern starts. In time there’ll be a length of stuff without a sign of you.

In time there will be something I don’t know yet and cannot now begin to envision —

except that it will include an absence. But you can’t include

absence is that which is not included. Then

I’ll yearn to re-ravel

you into

life.

This is an experiment suggested by Tony Maude at dVerse Form For All: a syllabic poem based on the Triangular Numbers in a mathematical progression known as Pascal's Triangle (in turn: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 and 21 syllables per line). In my version, obviously, the syllables also reverse back the other way, reflecting the movement of what is said, between addition and subtraction.

I am also submitting this piece to Poets United's Verse First ~ Edit to Elevate.