From a body of flowers strewn
Across the silence of a stream,
A prayer offers itself naked,
Unadorned to the fingers of sunlight
Caressing the swollen tip of shapeless clouds.
Someone chants the Credo & my knees
Topple like pinball, bowling pins,
To the concrete where one ant, two ants
Die, their scream subsonic enough
To escape a god's notice.
The wreaths bedecking gravestones
Smell of incense & lilacs - my son
Must be playing with his mother's things again.
The prayers fall back on us as rain,
The stream wakes and regurgitated the dream,
The flowers wilt into knots of pebbles
Polished in the star's wink.
The moon tries on her smile & likes it.
I have to feed the guests, listen for his tears,
Carry the trash to the back & bury my tears
Among the sameness of the dark space.
Silence, no laughter, no song,
No flutter of dress on skin, just
The tired snore of a little boy
& the long sigh of exhaustion.
I change the flowers in the stream,
Gather footprints, crumbs & dust from the floor,
A glass of wine exhausts its embrace in the air,
The moon expands her forced smile,
I hear a sniffle & here, here,
It is fine, it is going to be fine
But I don't believe it.
Sleep steals him off, away from me
So I sit there, holding his head,
Staring grief in the eye,
Stretching passed him to her,
To capture a smile, a wink,
The scent of her morning skin,
The taste of her morning breath,
Anything, everything, something.
The long sigh escapes me & we sit there,
My unplotted grief and I, as dawn
Seduces the night into wakefulness.
Hi dearie, trying my hands at the community feature. This should be fun eh?
©Osahon Oka, 2020.
Cheers for the first community post!
Hi @warpedpoetic
Thanks for being the first poem in The Ink well :)
I'm just eating dinner now but I'll come back to comment properly later tonight.
Already you prove the utility of the community. I have discovered you. And I certainly hope you did not write this poem on the spur, because if you did, I will never try my hand a poetry again. (I don't anyway. I can't write poetry.)
This is really so well done. You had me with the ants. There they be, helpless, victim to the whim of fate (or an indifferent God). Whether they die or live, inconsequential. As is your grief, your loss.
The poem is rich in symbolism, the language expressive but not excessive. All in all a great debut for this community.Hi @warpedpoetic,
Fabulous poem. I'm sobbing. Such gorgeous language
So many wonderful images in this poem Osahon.
I really like the way you create mood in this poem. Sublime!
I love this imagery of the flower like knots of pebbles!
Beautiful.
Thank you Rowan. I am hoping that my writing is improving. Thank God for steemit.
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What a powerful piece of poetry!!!!
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