Bubbles' NaPoWriMo

April 26

Of Windmills and Bon-Bons
(Ottava Rima)

Out here on the hills as in a white city,
They endure like giants, looming over the land.
Still stalks and striving arms evoke our pity;
They are becalmed, and in silence they will stand
Until the breathing wind, humid and gritty,
Sets them back to motion with a guiding hand.
Atop this wrinkled earth the tall windmills sleep,
Drifting in the breeze and dwarfing distant sheep.

The boy watches them and thinks of lollipops
And whirligigs, and toffees whisked from egg-whites.
Dark-eyed and somber, he fingers the gum drops
In his pocket and tilts back his head, the heights
Of these strange creatures beyond his reach. He stops
Only at the fence, thinking on the delights
Of whipped cream, embodied in the low, flat sky
(a sky threshed by swan-wings which will never fly).

Here in this distant country, far from his home,
Amidst the faint scent of sheep, the nodding heads
Of toitoi and feathergrass, the windmills comb
The hillside, stirring in plants and minds the threads
Of long-lost places. Travelling through the loam
Come memories of sweetshops and warm sweet-breads
Like messages in a complex, secret code.
The wind breathes on, leaving poems on the road.

I confess, I have been distracted all day. This is all I could produce on short notice and in a woefully difficult form.

April 27

The Honeybee
(Virelai Ancien)

A bee here toils from bloom to bloom;
A connoisseur, it will consume
Only the best,
The sweetest nectar (I presume).
It flits, a blur amidst perfume:
Tiny, obsessed,
Retrieving from each tall plume
The pollen of the hive for whom
It works with zest.

In my garden, an honoured guest,
I watch it working without rest.
I wish it well:
This little bee, I can attest
Produces, from its urgent quest
Cell after cell
Of delicious honey. I suggest
A mouthful – you will be impressed
By its nouvelle.

April 28

Writer’s Block
(Chaucerian Roundel)

In these, grave corridors of bone
Yoked together by flesh and vein,
The mind waits to be freed again.

The writer’s muse is trapped, alone;
A bird beating against the pane
In these grave corridors of bone.

One day, the window will be thrown
Open; those words it does contain
Will be released. Then peace will reign
In these grave corridors of bone.


In the First Degree
(Chaucerian Roundel)

Gunshots and fireworks sound much alike
In the fading silence of a bleak night
(a night when violence and flames ignite

With equal passion). A boy on a bike
Might be forgiven for not being right –
Gunshots and fireworks sound much alike.

As quick, as deadly as a lightning strike,
Beneath the flickering, fluorescent light –
Some policeman knows he won’t sleep tonight.
Gunshots and fireworks sound much alike.

April 28 is genius, 'nuff said.

April 29

Wrists and Ankles Need Not Apply
(Kyrielle)

I am hypnotized by your hands.
The way they move, it just demands
Attention. Those white butterflies
(Your hands) are where your beauty lies.

You have a pianist’s fingers;
Long and thin. When music lingers,
I watch them dance at the reprise.
Your hands are where your beauty lies.

I love to see them press the keys
Of Baby Grand, and soar with ease
To catch each note before it dies:
Your hands are where your beauty lies.

They crawl like caterpillars at
The lowest end, from flat to flat.
The way they move makes me surmise,
Your hands are where your beauty lies.

But I confess I like it best,
When your hands in mine come to rest
As if on flowers. In my eyes,
Your hands are where your beauty lies.

April 30

Underground
(Free Verse)

Mining stone for miracles, we reach
into the blind depths of a hapless earth
for something worth holding onto.
Unlike the diggers of gold rush days,
the vein we follow has a pulse, a beating heart
at whose apex lies the motherlode: the reason
that we all began.

For years, stumbling sightless in the weak light
of superstition, our hard hats of belief strapped
tightly to our heads (as if they can protect us
from the cave-ins that threaten, the dangers
that lie in breathing), we have plunged
into a restless deep, leaving markers as we go
(to pretend that all this matters). Others
will come after us – others went before us:
we can feel their passing like Braille
on the enclosing stone.

Nobody remembers those left on the surface,
whose faces still turn to the east in the morning
because they remember the way the sun rises.
Some days, when the weight of all that earth
has lifted from my shoulders, I believe
that I too can feel the clarity and simplicity
of rain washing out the dirt. We need not toil
when we can see the light, feel the grass
beneath our fingertips. In their own way, those
who choose this life have passed through that tunnel
to the other side. This is what we reach for.

Perhaps, in their own way, they too are breaking rocks.

Congratulations on surviving NaPo, everybody!