#NaPoWriMo 2021 – Day Two – No Map For These Lands

No point crying over spilt memories,
when the morning slinks in early and worn,
shivers itself under the covers beside you
dew damp and clinging.

Regrets evaporate eventually,
or so you tell yourself, tucking your face
into the hollow of morning’s shoulder,
scenting last year’s summer.

‘Imagine if-‘
Slide your hand across morning’s mouth,
so similar to your own it seems,
hush her into half-sleep.

We have other questions to ask
when the sun is finished stretching awake,
and none of them look back
on the moments set in stone.

‘But you want to? Don’t you?’
heavier now with pillow pull, sinking
stone dropped into still waters,
down, down we go.

The earlier moments seem blurry now,
edges smoothed so it all seems inevitable,
choices we tripped around first time,
face planting into our decisions.

Still… we got here in one piece,
or enough pieces to pull together a whole
with two halves and another third
steadily on its way.

‘All of it could have been so different,’
but nothing wistful in that thought
which slips away with the other dreams
at the call of morning breaking.


Today’s optional prompt for #NaPoWriMo, is to write a poem about The Road Not Taken, pulling inspiration from Robert Frost’s poem. I’m already very good at picking apart my past choices, and obsessing over how things could have turned out so differently if I’d made a slightly different decision. I decided I didn’t need to voice that again in a poem as it’s not the healthiest of habits, and I’m trying to be better about looking forward rather than back. It’s all experience in the end, and we can only learn from the past, we can’t change it.

Find A Room, Make Yourself At Home

All corridors run back to you,
though they say loss gets less
the longer you let it sit.
And you’ve been sitting here,
in this hollow you left for a while now
Just a slither of yourself
with no new words to say
that might explain this empty.
And barricades don’t keep
the door from banging open,
every time a storm
or gentle breeze blows in.
It only takes a name,
or a memory,
to raise your shade.
So I given up airing out this room
with all your secrets.
Leave another hole in the wall
the same shape as my fist,
pretend I haven’t
when the moments leaves.
Re-watch you walk in
sit down
pick up your drink.
Re-watch you pick up your drink.

dverselogo

Removals Man #DVersePoets #TuesdayPoetics

They hire him to take up gravestones

in old cemetery grounds.

Pay him by the hour,

to tease out lichen lost names,

note them,

in neat, thin rows of records

only his eyes will read,

and murmur each syllable

into the fresh split of dark soil

before the groundsman comes

with his sack of grass seed,

already whistling

to no one at all.

dverselogo

 

 

Cascade #NaPoWriMo #DVersePoetics

You have to swim here.

Kick to keep afloat,

and scoop the water

into yourself,

with arms winged

either side

of a weightless body.

 

Dug out by the flow,

a pool deepened

by cascade.

A bridge

masked by track

and concrete.

This place

is thick green

almost jungle.

 

Clear

right to the sand,

easy to pretend

I know this place.

Too well

to be tricked.

Safety in confidence

I say.

 

Water washes all clear

away,

but to where,

and when,

will it come to shore

again?

 

napo2019button1 (1)

dverselogo

A prompt mash up tonight. Ending on a question for NaPoWriMo Day Two and ‘Cascade‘ for dVersePoetsPub poetics night.