Writer's Circle prompt: Earth

 
Earth Collage
1.
I read through all my poems
to find references
to earth.  I find some
I scoop up and hold
In one hand.
 
In my other hand I hold
a small blue marble
earth as if I could see
home from a spaceship
in the solar system.
 
2.
Before bicycles
took over, entire
villages lived in
our broken gravel
driveway
 
We carved out
Intersections and
roads meticulously
with the side of our hands
 
For the routes of
die-cast cars, vans
and scratched-paint
pick-up trucks.
 
Plastic tracks on rugs
couldn’t compete
with our dirt tracks,
scratched knees
 
And smudged shirts
from making and
remaking our towns
after anger stomped
 
Or real cars rolled
them away
like sand paintings
in the winds of time.
 
 
3.
Back when I was sane
I labored at the Mum Farm.
No.
Back when I was insane
I labored at the Mum Farm
to find what I had lost.
No. 
It's hard to tell the truth.
 
Back then I found myself
squatting between rows of color,
knees and hands brown from being
kind to roots and buds while
upper teeth held my bottom lip
 
Back then, sweat from my forehead
moistened my forearms, my shirt stuck
to my back, and my hands found
the healing heart of Mother Earth.  
 
4.
Look at my body riddled with 70 years of scars
that I sanitize and cover with clothes.
Broken, I resemble earth or any one of its
family. I take my place between a rabbit
and a dogwood tree. Two of three of us siblings
move purposefully away from home and homeward,
while the stationary one grows up, down, and out
from its center, never detaching from Mother.
Mother Earth and Father Sky—that's what
I call them—embrace all their children.
I don't wiggle away defiantly, but claim my home,
where Earth and Sky know me holy
alongside wrens and other flying things,
alongside trees and fruits of flowers' labor, too.
Nothing stops them—not scars, clothes, nor my attempts
to disguise my brokenness. Let me, then, accept
this now wholly, embrace earth and sky and siblings
as they are, and open my heart to the moment's
beauty beyond truth, its joy beyond grief.
Together, we erode. We grow. And we evolve.
 
5.
I was closest to earth
when I owned a piece of it
and lived amid maple trees
wisteria and lilacs.
 
Outside I added rhoddies, roses,
pine trees, and a pink dogwood tree.
My hands were soiled from planting tomatoes,
peppers, and lettuce.  My sneakers were green
from mowing the front and backyard lawns.
 
Inside, I lived near all the windows:
360 degrees of weather
360 degrees of day and night
360 degrees of earth life
Flying, running, and tunneling.
 
 
Now my windows have 120 degrees to the southeast
with dawn, morning light, and afternoon shadow.
Magnolia trees and parking lots outside my windows,
A blessed garden down 2 elevators in back.
 
My clean hands hold poems
and one blue marble.
I am at home on earth.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

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