Sitting on a bench
beside this small lake
on a warm, sunny
winter March day,
in Texas, not yet Spring,
but it feels good.
A golf course
on the opposite side,
with carts silently
moving, following, stopping,
going nowhere
to find a ball.
Golfers swing clubs,
ride to find balls.
Some call it exercise.
I gave it up
in college. No
regrets.
What is it
about the water
that calms me
and I want to
write a poem
about feeling
peaceful, calm,
listening without
hearing brave birds?
Soon it will be
Spring, and
I’ll return here,
to find calm.
A nice day, this,
in many ways.
Look both ways around the water.
There’s the natural and the not.
Mind the gaps where golfers lose their balls.
I was, just now, sleepily standing safe in our kitchen
at oh five dark-thirty, Saturday, Texas morning time,
making number-one coffee, pondering plans,
rethinking walking rain-soaked muddy trails across flooded washes and creeks,
when,
just then,
sudden total darkness ripped me,
chased by thunderous, deafening shooting blinding
white flashes of lightening impacted and replaced,
just now,
my life’s early morning tranquility,
unwelcomely scalding my serenity,
just then.
***
Look both ways when meteorologists warn of Nature’s hazards.
Mind the gaps for disruptions to the darkened peace of early mornings on the prairie.
Today I am writing to you from the boonies of Colorado City, Texas. My Monday morning challenge was to produce a meditative poem from a position of tranquility (it is like that here this morning, but I’m snickering), on an emotion I have felt powerfully. I’m not sure what I did, but I felt that.
The day four prompt of the 2018 National Poetry Writing Month challenge is “to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like ‘beauty’ or ‘justice,’ but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns.”
I used an essay I posted in December 2017, as an idea for the abstract noun tranquility. The concretes were the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that led to the abstraction. You can read the essay if you click here.
Tranquility Remembered: the sounds of silence
My young mind was filled with thought
As I walked, no music or sounds I’d hear
Only deep moans from snow as I crushed it below
A cold white blanket on my pensive dark thoughts
Fairies, charming and peaceful my footsteps they heard
They opened my eyes to tranquil aura yet silent
I saw in the darkness a light with no sound, but
The sweet sounds of silence sent aroma that night
My thoughts melted away into the image of stillness
I heard not a hush of sound cut crisp cold calm air
A silence of power and of peace lifted me up
The flavor of quiet and snow calmed the darkness
Like the artistry of a perfectly painted picture
A vision of nature stillness lived in my brain
That moonlit night not long ago
in halo of street lights and a
reflection of memory of new lying snow
I remember the cold night
I remember the sounds and the silence
I remember the calm peaceful taste of tranquility
I remember I Remember I REMEMBER!
(Bill Reynolds 4/4/2018)
Fill the gaps with memory.
Look for beauty both ways.
Our Literary Journey 