Poem for Poetry Thursday

Last Minute

Say nice sweater. Say I look beautiful.
Say the rain is a shadow inside my body.
Maybe you meant to say shallow. Maybe
I was mistaken. Maybe I was only thinking
about the rain and someone’s woolen voice
wrapped around me. Say I am an Amazon rainforest,
with canopy of leaves protecting my understory.
Say the words so I can stretch them across my dry,
cracked body. Say that gravity is just the earth
pulling me back home. Tell me all of this
and I’ll tell you how I treaded
an ocean of indecision to get to this sweater,
its woven imperfections under the heavy layers of winter.
Tell me how lucky am to recognize irony
as an element of beauty, that I chose something last minute,
because in real life that’s the only real minute we have.
Tell me I look like rain today.
Tell me I must be mistaken.



Happy Poetry Thursday! (Don't get me started on my morning--let's just say I spent it trying to get my frozen car window up from the down position with a hair dryer!)

What a great prompt! I chose Jim Brock's line, "the rain is a shadow inside our bodies" and tweaked it. I feel like I used a really great line and surrounded it with a mediocre poem. And what I mean is, my instinct is to get rid of a really great line to strengthen the piece as a whole. But I think with a little more tweaking I can make it work. I just wrote this so it's really raw--hasn't found the right form yet.

Looking forward to reading lots of poetry this week. (And thanks, Jim, for sharing a piece of your work with us.)