Point me to Write...Edit...Publish

It’s August and it’s time to make my way back to Write…Edit…Publish even as I pack up after the home leave and return to my second home, which is actually the first home because that's where I am most of the year.  WEP, hosted by Denise and Yolanda, is where we gather to share and hone our creative skill sets - mostly writing, but wide open also to other artforms/interpretations. Click the link to find out more. And jump in with your take on the prompt if you like.  


The prompt this time is 'gardens' and I am back with another of my experiments in poetry – this one a 14X14, a series of 14 themed sonnets. Only the word limit means fitting in 10 and not the entire 14. Which matters not a bit, because each part is complete in itself and can be read independently on its own as well as part of the series.  And my treatment of the prompt deviates from the suggestions by the hosts in that I am not talking about any one garden in particular - this entire earth is a garden and I am beyond thrilled to be in it, whatever the landscape, whatever the season, all beautiful, all good...except when Man gets too smart and messes things up big time.

I.

Point me to the earth, always, always,

even one thousand years later,

when all you have is some fragments

and this yellowed, sparse dust of paper.

When words have lost their hundred tongues,

cities have plucked their hundred streets

and thrown them like javelins straight and hard,

when the meek come to leash the elite;

the smoke from rocks is tightly curled,

the sun’s lava a wrinkled-skin moon.

The skyscrapers have their yawns shushed

but still silence won’t carry a tune.

Point me to the Earth even then,

to lost wildflowers, fossils of pollen.

II

Point me always to the horizon,

grind me small into the wild gardens

even when they’re wholly paved over

by old snowflakes and stonemasons.

When the trees have shuddered off their leaves,

when the only bird is just a clock

and time has stumbled into its own crease,

and can’t move or turn on the peptalk.

Earthworms have burrowed for so long

that they’ve gone off the deepest end.

When fingers scratch at concrete lots,

caravans march but don’t befriend.

Point me always towards the soil

through the centuries, through the turmoil.

III

Lay each of the fragments on the ground

even when the grounds have been war,

and each cup has raised a tempest

and stormhands and strong handlers roar

even when the good earth’s frozen

and the bad earth’s melted and burnt;

dig me deeper, deeper, even then

when singleminded sods can’t be turned.

Each village tears up its neighbour’s steps,

the broad river scurries underground,

oceans of oily fury shred,

summer bulbs, human ribs and sounds.

Push me deeper then under the sands

where the tides can’t get at the land.

IV

Where every dream and mote is scorched

and the heat unbearably high -

no seeds can sleep, no grain’s ever tossed,

no sphinx ever moved its stony thigh.

Point me there, when there’s zilch to point

when the garden’s left without its guard,

the beds are just one lump of ruins,

each one of the orchards is charred;

where the mudtrack’s run out, like tears

along the sagging cheeks of settlements.

Point me there, when all are oblivious

to what gardens and orchards once meant.

Even when the earth’s just embers,

ash and smoke, and no-one remembers.

V.

Point me always towards the mud

where a million ranks of marching men,

a million pairs of sturdy boots

have churned up the guts of the fallen.

If you can make out what was the heel -

place it deep where the blood and organs

have soaked into layered stone and soil,

braid the hair into the veins of veins.

Point me always to this wide earth

even when it’s narrowed down by men;

when the stench of greed fouls its old rivers,

uproots and lays waste each garden,

even when it’s slicked with guts and gore

of millions in an ancient, endless war.

  

VI.

Sharpen me like a pencil point

and sow my tip right into the earth;

stab me deep, plant me fathoms down

where molten metal transforms the dirt,

where primordial feuds like dragon teeth

grind in sleep, biding their time to sprout;

work me in lovingly, in so deep

that the longest scythes can’t cut me out

and the most vicious spades cannot reach.

Let my points, be they one or hundred

be mindful of the company they keep

and come to rest always in the mud.

What’s the use of sharpness otherwise

if all it’s slicing is empty skies?

VII

Plant me when all the springs are over

and even the winters have long gone

on tiptoes one after the other

and the day’s just a seasonless dawn,

the skies are apple green and their clouds

come in nimbus wrecks and cirrus shells,

the furrows deadly straight but obscured

and the rain’s just a dreaded acid swell.

Plant me when the weather’s never there -

entire climate’s din is quiet at last

because it’s lost its bearings, unclear

if it’s present at all or it’s just past.

Sow me even then deep into the sludge

when season’s just a meaningless smudge.

VIII

Point me to the earth even when

the borders between the ground and sky

are hard to tell apart, hard to sense

the ends of low and the start of high.

You’ll know the place where your feet stand

shovel there and you’ll find my place too

down in the heart of earth, well beyond

the colourless winds and skies and seablue.

Keep me safe in the closed fists of mud,

wrap fingers of soil about my soul,

and even if you can’t, it’s enough

to touch the earth and be healed and whole.

Point me always towards the earth

not at death, from the first spasm of birth.

IX

I don’t need the wings, I don’t need

to fly anywhere, to be close

to the orbits of stars and galaxies.

Enough that I walk in the boroughs

of milkweed and long grass, quite enough

to feel the sands scorch my bare feet,

the morning mist melt into the mud

and lift again at midday heat.

A vine, a tree, a fruit and a serpent

suffice to make this a garden

suppose it’s only the snake, I’d still want

to be here always, even then.

Don’t fret if you can’t dig much, can’t shove

me deep. Just a touch of earth is enough.

X

Point me always towards the earth,

place me firmly on it or below -

a Midas embrace in reverse

drawn gold from this dust, full from hollow,

morphed into something rarer, finer,

in moments and over eternities.

Lay me down and embed me firmer

into these landscaped uncertainties.

Point me always, always to this earth,

forget what edens lie beyond grasp.

Pinpricks of light in wide smears of dark -

the sky’s a void too empty to clasp,

so place me here, freezing sands or warm,

these gardens of wastelands. And I’m home.

 W.C -993

And I'm actually home in stable wifi zone in a couple of days more, and will definitely come around then if I haven't been able to do so before. It's great being back here at WEP.....point me to WEP always..  :)