I’m using daily prompts associated with Inktober (artists doing ink drawings) to spur poetry this month. The poems flow from the prompts, though it may not be obvious (at all); and sometimes the poems are revisions of earlier poems that came to mind when I mulled the prompt. If there’s a photo in the post, it was chosen after the poem was written. I’m “showing my work” by offering some of the words, phrases, associations that came to me for each prompt. The poems may or may not have anything to do with gardens, gardening, or “nature” as it’s commonly considered. To see all the poems (once they’re written), check the Inktober landing page.

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Today’s prompt: BUILD.

Some associations: bower, construct, demolish, compile, develop, flesh out, increase, boost, escalate, physique, body, body building, bicycle built for two, built for comfort not for speed, built to last, built to order, house that Jack built, if you build it they will come, build hopes up (false hope), built upon sand, build up (hype), build castles in the air (fantasize, false hope), build a better mousetrap (improve, invent), building, architecture is frozen music

Poem:

Ashore

Now is not the time to move to the coast.
I know that. The coast is moving to another coast,
inching away, day by day, while I spend months
and now it’s leaked into years looking for what lasts,
what won’t tip into the sea or flood to the first floor,
and meanwhile the coast is seeping away. All that saltwater,
my lapping tears mingle as I wave from
the delicate shore that feels so sure
today.

I know it’s not the time. But there is no other time,
and there is no other place
besides this aquamarine union,
where the underwater cargo, the inklings, the fathomless dreams,
can be released, baptized, given a true name.

©MMWms 2019

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