An April Poem

Hello Gentle Readers. 

Here is a little story about one of my poems. Now and then I walk by a neighborhood park adjacent to a school ground. Most of the park is wide open space where one has a dazzling view of the sky. However, there are several old elms at one end. One of them has a unique structure with a large limb that arcs over the ground or maybe it is two trees grown together. When I see the trees, I wonder how the limbs were formed and how, with children climbing on them, they continue to maintain their integrity. Someday wind, water, and gravity will bring them down.

During the pandemic year and especially in the Spring of lockdown, the school grounds were eerily empty and the park was quiet. At that time many of us walked to get out of the house and also for the solace available in the natural world. One of those April days, I walked by the empty park and noticed a kite hanging in the upper branches of one of the trees. When I returned home, I jotted down my observations and over the next months, I jiggled words and sentences into a poem. Off and on, I worked on it. The poem wouldn't gel so I set it aside. 

This winter I looked at the poem again. When I couldn't find a metaphor, I tried simile. I still don't know if the poem works but regardless I'm sharing it here. As the thoughtful extraordinary poet, Mary Oliver, wrote in her book, Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, "Poetry, imaginatively, takes place within the world. It does not take place on a sheet of paper." (p.67)

At the Edge of an Empty Park, April 25, 2020 *

At the edge of an empty park under

a sky broader than any bank of glass

the wind carries a message

to a broken kite in the elm.

It is like standing on a prairie ridge

listening to grasses rattle

watching an unknown insect chirp

then launch itself over your ankle

which is nothing but a broken limb,

a clump of dung, a bittersweet vine.

Sensation know by hinge of joints

dusted with the breath of a dandelion. 

* copyright Jane A. Wolfe

This poem is part of a collection of poems that reference the Prairie. The photos were taken this week so the kite is long gone but the school grounds were full of the sounds from children at play.