Poetry: Resilience

Here is poem #19 for the poetry pledge drive, which was inspired by a few things - watching my husband work in the garden today, hearing about evictions in the news, having just said goodbye to someone who is moving tomorrow, and thinking about moving myself.

I'm trying hard not to look back at what I've posted so far, not to judge and compare each piece, but I can't seem to help it. The danger of doing it is that it can be tantamount to writing an engraved invitation to writer's block, but it can also open your eyes to bad writing habits you need to break, weaknesses you need to overcome, etc.

So far, two things of which I've become acutely aware are that my imagery could stand to be more subtle yet stronger and that the meter and cadence of my lines truly suck. To remedy the former, I know I need to use less obvious and more vivid and evocative language. Fixing the latter is going to prove to be a challenge though. I look forward to analyzing that problem a little more closely when I evaluate all 30 of these poems at the end of the month. Lord knows what else I'll discover in the process . . . .

Resilience

As the season changes -
A tap on the shoulder - you turn
Over the soil, and the earth starts

To crawl. Evicted but not put out,
The pill bugs get straight to work navigating
The new terrain. Things that could have been

Much worse are fine. In the fetal position,
They still find good shelter. When we move,
I hope to remember this.

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