Tag Archives: sky

Defying Gravity

Until there are rocket stations
adjoining subways
in our major metropolises
and space spas with moon walks
to the Sea of Tranquility where
we can weightless wash our cares away,
we must make do.

Some choose sky,
strap on silk wings and glide,
expanses of serenity and updraft-seeking
interspersed
in an intricate courtship with friction
that leaves their souls windswept
in a good way.

Others choose water,
shed clothes and float
blind deaf mute
in womb-like, tomb-like isolation chambers
where bodymindspirit merge
into miracles of enlightenment
by negation.

I choose earth,
smooth out a blanket and lie
spread-eagled,
grounded yet adrift in pacific blue,
metamorphosing as the world
spins to a stop, and a grin
splits the skin of my sobriety.

Peace to your ♥!

Your Move / stirring the sky

NaPoWriMo21 Day 28. Today’s napowrimo.net prompt is to write a poem that poses a series of questions. I’m posting the poem I wrote this morning along with one written earlier this month as part of my poemcrazy project. It asks only a single question, but a provocative one, I think. Peace to your ♥!

Your Move

Do you feel glossy inside and outwardly matte?
Do you have a rainbow heart no one else can see?
Do the lively words in your mouth sound flat?
Does the dancer in you long to dance free?

There is no photo that can do you justice.
There is no pot of gold to serve as clue.
There is no effervescing kiss.
There is a choreographer—you.

Stirring the Sky

     A million words...

                    ...which ones are yours?

Poem titles from chapters 43 and 46 of poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge.

“Blue Without You”

I loved, as a child, lying on my back on the ground. Sometimes I lay on a blanket, sometimes directly on the grass. Eyes closed, muscles relaxed and supported by the warm earth–it made me feel grounded. Opening my eyes and looking up at the sky evoked an entirely different feeling. Peace to your ♥ !

Blue Without You

I lie beneath
a tangible sky, lungs full
of visceral blue.

If only you
were here with me, drowning
in this deep

blue sea, too.

© Stephanie Malley

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 21 – Write a poem in honor of Earth Day.

“Today’s Sky”

The sky where I live can be totally overcast one minute and wide-open blue ten minutes later. Yesterday was an exception–nonstop rain and gray–but today the clouds have gone from blanket to cotton balls. Very pretty. Peace to your ♥ ! 

Today’s Sky

At first sight, I thought you so-so:
   the same-old, same-old overcast clouds.

Then I looked intently, took notice
   of every shade from light to grayest gray,

The gradations shifting over time,
   drifting, over time, over treetops and away.

You’re not humdrum but awesome,
   and I’m humbly and awesomely wowed.

© Stephanie Malley

NaPoWriMo20 Day 27 - Write a poetic review of something not normally reviewed, like your mother-in-law or the moon. Thank you to Maureen Thorson at NaPoWriMo.net for the prompt.

“Stuck is a State of Mind”

And my mind is in a state of mush. Peace to your ♥ ! 

Stuck is a State of Mind

Stuck is a state of mind. Sure, this house is stuck to its foundation
more securely than gum to the roof of one’s mouth, but think of it
as the base of a diving board for launching thoughts into the blue.
Cowabunga! Cannonballs and bellyflops! The sky pool is as ever
before and never before, its same-old, same-old clouds newly
numinous, figments of imagination (a boat? an ice cream cone?).
The sun goldens the air. Why is the cornflower bloom above us
connoted with sadness? The world is topsy-turvy: you can quote
me on that. But going back—I wasn’t stuck in grade three when
summer was free. I lapped up the shade, made the breeze do
my bidding, like a slave fanning a sultan. Nothing planned, and
still the pin oak leaves went whispering away, our lazy secret.
My mind ranged over the fence: “the grass is always greener”
but I was content to survey my realm from a blanket “throne”
upon the ground. The mind is agile, far more agile than fragile;
with proper exercise, we shall see what we shall see. My children
shriek “Eek! A spider in the kitchen!” I have already spied her
elsewhere, she with her small black arachnid ways. I have my
glooming gray days climbing mental walls. High enough, I hope,
to drop into a vineyard in Tuscany and loll among the grapes.
(“Wine is bottled poetry” said Stevenson, who went swinging
“[u]p in the air and over the wall”.) Perhaps there is the getaway
Toni Morrison assures me I will recognize upon arrival: “the vision
of a place you’ve had in your mind all along” where it’s “almost
as if you’ve been away and in this place you meet yourself again.”
Hello, dearheart. Notice, dear fellow earthlings, how I perch
on my Amish rocker, handcrafted with curlicues of actual limbs.
Not rooted to this spot. Not glued to my seat. Perched. Winging it.

©  Stephanie Malley

NaPoWriMo20 Day 25 -  Use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem. Thank you to Maureen Thorson at NaPoWriMo.net for the prompt.