Challenge Completed – Writing Streak Week 5

Day 1: River Birch

a spiral stairwell to paradise.
nine-flight trunk of steps,
angel wings cast out in cantilevers of emerald and amber.
they are vertebrae to the spindly spine,
haloed in rainbow rings,
and if you listen,
you can hear them sing in the breeze.

a swooping bird
could watch the tumbling roots, hardened honey over grass
climb up and
up and
up until sun-stained forks
puncture the silver sheen of the cumuli,
and bathe in blue.


Day 2: Weeping Cherry

I know why the Willow weeps.
For life has hollowed him
to a storm-tossed shell.

But you,
with your fountain of 
baby pink and vanilla and pearls,
kissed and caressed by Nature’s forces – 
an arborescent beauty.
Yet your branches are like soggy paper in the rain.
Why?
Why do your blossoms bow so low?
Are they so desperate
to make small talk with the grass,
or are you, beneath them, hurting?

As passersby see the petals
and beg, Who painted you?
do you wonder the same for
what’s on the inside?

And what’s on the inside?

I must know, for perhaps,
the sap in your veins could
resemble the blossoms that so delicately wreathe you.
If, Cherry, I knew why you weep,
Perhaps I could lift your head again.


Day 3: Rooted

An old soul
who’s abandoned his search for love, because
his legs are too walked-on to carry him further,
eyes too weary to guide him, and
they’ve seen the world already,
in their years of relentlessly turning out its pockets.

So he sits.

He lets his roots unfurl in the soil,
extends his leaves to brush the morning sky,
and he is a teabag,
dispensing all that was, gifting it to the breeze,
and soaking up sunlight.
And a word carves a pathway to his lips,
one he hasn’t uttered in far too long.

Home.

It’s just as this word wanders out of him that he sees it –
a robin, frantic and flitting about,
in search of place to nest.

Day 4: Split

It feels the downpour lick through its bark,
rain seeping into its wood and
bleeding into its sap.
In pirouettes of wind, it stands.
In flares of violent blue, it shudders.

A bare candelabra,
tarnished limbs flapping in all directions
as electric ribbons slice the air –
dangerously close.

It says,
I will stand and shudder all night if I have to.
I will sop, I will soak.
I will wait for the sun.

A horrible c r a c k.

Poor thing couldn’t have known
all that would see the sun again
would be splinters and ash.


Day 5: One Giant Leap

The flag that God planted
when His ship had concluded its journey
and He saw the world whirring at last,
and said, One giant leap…