Friday, February 10, 2006

No

Willow Creek Utah is where:

no willows weep
no creek creeps.
The sky is alone,
wet is unheard of -

and no nahuana hum-hovers above
the miragewater dance of desert magic.

There is no tractor ping.
No blades to boulders sing.
No lovers toil rocky soil
with grinding hips or slippery slips
of silken lips by satin fullmoon fires.

No, there are just rows of
snakeskin and stone,
and they remain silent.


This poem was written for the writing challenge I mentioned in my last post. Willow Creek is an actual place, a ghost town in the desert of Utah. The nahuana is the damselfly - I love the sound of the scientific name "nahuana" it almost sounds indian, and seemed to fit nicely here.

Revised and posted [here]

2 comments:

  1. Erin, you could make me love rhyme again. :) This really is beautiful, especially considering it's a challenge piece and not something that was deeply inspired by part of your own psyche, if you understand what I mean by that.

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  2. Thank you Ang! And yeah, I know what you mean, challenge pieces tend to be largely uninspired, but this challenge actually inspired me.

    Unfortunately, this piece is bugging me - not that it rhymes, because obviously that was intentional, but the way it rhymes... Can't quite explain what I mean, except that it isn't "lyrical" the way I intended it to be.

    Must.fix.this.

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