All The Cool Kids Are Doin' It

In third grade, I wrote a poem for, of all things, a social studies assignment. At this point, this is all I can remember of it: 

Across the Plains,

They once were plenty.

Now there aren't very many.

Don't you know?

It's the buffalo.

Sad to say, that probably represents the peak of my poetic prowess. I've always found poetry--both reading it and writing it--to be a little intimidating somehow.

A little over a week ago, TangledLou posted an exercise from The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach and challenged her faithful fellow bloggers to play along. The word "poetry" there in the title scared me a little, as it always does, but after nine days of internal pep talks supplemented by TangledLou's external encouragement (and her assurance that "lyrical prose" counts), I put the pen to paper.

I'm not really sure what to call what came out in my "Ten-Minute Spill" (specifics can be found here)--poetry, prose, punctuation-challenged--but here it is, whatever it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toast smeared with blackberry jam,

Pressed from berries picked months ago beneath a cloudless August sky,

Licking sticky fingers as Coyote yet again overruns the cliff's edge.

He never falls until he looks down.

I leapt into marriage and motherhood without a glance.

With those precious entanglements comes the moment of understanding--again and again

That the consequence of each choice and every action is no longer only mine to bask in or suffer through.

The desire to protect them all--from the world, from myself--overpowers nearly everything,

Until, finally, fear's voice is the loudest one in my head

And behind me are decades of too much looking and not enough leaping.