In Search of the Quiet
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This is for the quiet place poem where we're asked to provide the original paragraph:
I don’t have a quiet place that isn’t too noisy anymore, someone always talking, the pool fountain rushing and the tanagers scuttling back and forth to scratch the sand and flutter wings into the shade. I had a nest, with broken eggs and the soft down of baby bird fur shed in their departure where I cried for tomorrow and closed doors. I had a path down a weedy river’s edge where I hunted for hideaways from which to launch my ships and itchy starched elastic snapped lace to pull me away from setting free. I am broken on the gravelly field like a puzzle to put back together but somehow all the blood got up and walked off and there is only skin stretched under the hot skin and the bones poking that even those considering stew walk off in dismay. I am a thousand fists shaken at the night sky at the burning embers and twisted clouds at those escaping far and away. I am the turned soil, the forgotten names of every plant that carried my soul, the tree of sacrifice painted against my belief in life and the downy comforter, nestlike, can you find my eyes any more? Did they poke those out too so that I wouldn’t remember tea rose scent or the paper of carnation petals or the pavement my feet have always known.
I’m tilling to forget that night
of fire and betrayal.
Turning the soil over, over and over,
over days months eons.
Waiting to be fed when belly
aches with hunger and thirst.
Did you have to poke out my eyes?
Make me remember silk?
I am a thousand fists shaken
in night sky. I am broken
on gravelly field, a puzzle,
my boiling blood walked off
left me skin stretched under hot sun
bleached bones poke out.
The others walked off in disgust
when you left us without.
Once our riverside hideout
let us launch our toy ships,
rode bubbles, slid over rock
churning fast and away...
The baby down pasted nest no
longer holds us inside,
too noisy, cramped in quiet spots
by sea, beg drown sorrow.
I’m tilling to forget, turn soil
over and over, hope to eat,
hope the fire that escaped our soil
hope it was just a dream.
Hope you didn't steal our resources,
steal all our heritage.
We have no future echoes loud
down the halls of lost time.
We did the tilling that launched you
into a tomorrow.
There you are, sailing free, happy.
We remain. Left behind.
Copyright © Sheri Fresonke Harper | Year Posted 2012
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