Flash Fiction, Friday Jan 8

My Critic has this thing about me writing poetry, or rather the Critic is quick to remind me that I am not great at poetry and thinks I should avoid it at all costs. I'm not entirely convinced the Critic is wrong, but I've decided to continue the practice of forcing myself to post my poems somewhere whenever I happen across them.

So, for Flash Fiction Friday, here is a poem from senior year of high school:

Retreat

Nature's call is a siren's song.
Trees croon lullabyes with creaking limbs.
Grass whispers secrets to the wind, and
the brook's cheerful chatter tells us to hurry
as we fly to nature's retreat.

But we look back.


Jangling phones, shreiking printers,
cranky customers, bosses with razor tongues,
children clamoring for attention,
clanging construction, blaring alarms,
headaches screaming for Excedrin -
These are the tools society uses to
restrain our retreat.

Mother Nature greets you in her backyard,
a barefoot version of Cinderella's fairy godmother
with twigs in her hair and grass stains on her feet.
Her smile shines like the sun in her domain, and
her bower offers respite from the world looming large
behind us. The cheerful brook lip-laps away the headache,
the grass massages stressed muscles, and
the trees rock us into peaceful repose.

Then we go back.

---

I suppose poetry is like anything else - you have to practice to get better. Still, I persist in seeing poetry as something you are born with, not something you learn. I can't imagine ever really getting comfortable with it, but picking at the scab of it every so often seems to be good for me.

I was also reminded of a poem that I'd almost forgotten, but that still gets right inside me. It's Love Song: I and Thou by Alan Dugan, and I have always connected with it. You can read it here.

On another topic, I pulled out some of my very first stories the other day in a fit of nostalgia. I have to apologize to some of my poor characters, because I had completely forgotten about them. I remembered a few as works in progress, but I did have a couple that were completely finished. Very much a sixteen-year-old-girl kind of thing, but not altogether the horror I remembered. I also found a hard copy of one of two fanfiction stories that I'd lost. It's like having an extra warm fuzzy blanket to know that story's in the world somewhere again.