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: COAT

Some associations: ride on someone’s coattails, coating, coated, cloaked, candy coat, men in white coats, coat & tie, turncoat, paint, cover, jacket, coat of many colours, cloak and dagger, furcoat, leather, crust, hide, pelt, coating, layer, jacket, raincoat, coat of arms, blanket

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Poem (written around 1993, revised in 2012 and in Oct. 2019):

October Mulching

Shrouding patchwork quilt
enfolds her tuckered body,
drifting, silenced, senseless,
fallen into sleep.

Her tight shoulders released
from quotidian afternoon service
ache with the loss of the square-point shovel
blanketing layers of soggy mulch
around three fragrant olive shrubs,
green pinches of berried hollies, deep
sleeping springtime bulbs, their colors
inhumed below the brooding autumn earth
like motley prayers lodged within a coffined heart.

She sleeps in fits, the sound of drowsing irises
creeping into orphan dreams.
Her arms flutter. Crisp yellowing leaves
drop mutely to the cushioned ground beneath.

© MMWms 1993/2019

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