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: SLING

Some associations: arm in a sling, sling hash, fling, heave, hurl, lob, catapult, suspend, toss, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, singapore sling, sling shot, ass in a sling, low slung

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Poem — & be sure to watch the 3-minute video following:

Tree Pose

Wanting is what lures us,
leads us into temptation,
the compulsion of belief that
without,
without whatever it is,
whatever we think it is,
we’re incomplete,
alas and alack,
deficient and hollow;
and it’s not only wanting but
envisioning exactly,
surely,
urgently
what will be,
what needs to be,
what should have been,
that disinclines us to grope, unknowing,
for what’s bubbling up, in and around,
what’s becoming, what’s working its way
to pliant tree strength,
moving in and out of the pose,
swaying, and feeling the sway,
the pitch and heave,
recognising it’s not
the moment of balance
but the balancing,
and it’s not going to be
the cow you expected but
an unlikely lumbered piano
choreographed, catapulted,
suspended, arching, coming nigh.

It’s not the thing you fling;
it’s the fling itself.

©MMWms 2019

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All props to possibly my favourite Northern Exposure episode:

Piano Fling Scene (Northern Exposure) from Liviu B on Vimeo.