Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit marvelous Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for Roundup.
For today's ArtSpeak: FOLK ART, I have an unidentified piece of art. I found it on Pinterest, and sadly I can't credit the artist. It's a pretty great piece!
As I was writing my poem, I was thinking about the vortex of illness, and how consuming it is.
Its title is reminiscent of a poem I wrote during 2020, my "Red" year: The World of the Vase is Dark, Wet. But the messages of the poems are completely different! Thanks so much for reading.
The world inside the whale is dark, briny
Mountains rise on one side,
tides on the other.
I am pitched forward,
back. I am upside-down.
My boat swirls past,
disappears.
If I wanted to, I could
stop. I could follow the boat.
But I want to live.
I kick, I surge.
I pull my way past
sharks, eels.
The world inside the whale
is dark, briny.
I am rising, surfacing.
I am a rainbow spouting
from a whale's blowhole.
I am free!
- Irene Latham
Love the ending line "I am a rainbow spouting
ReplyDeletefrom a whale's blowhole." This art piece is fabulous. And you gave it life with your story-poem.
I am a rainbow spouting
ReplyDeletefrom a whale's blowhole.
So powerful and beautiful! And I just listened to a novel that had a sort of toy store where the shop looked like a whale was swallowing it. Customers walked through the wide open mouth into a room with slightly curved walls. Funny to read a swallowed-by-a-whale-poem today!
What a journey! I went back and re-read the World of the Vase is Wet and Dark...Oh, what crazy days those were. I'm so glad to be done with them...but am I? Sometimes, the way the world has permanently changed bumps into me in weird ways...But I want to live! I really do. Even with the weirdness and the things that make me sit and think. Beautiful thoughts today.
ReplyDeleteThe vortex of illness is beautifully explained in a maze of well-chosen world, Irene. After my time in May I can attest to these lines:
ReplyDeleteI kick, I surge./I pull my way past but then there are the last stanza and last line that make such sense to me. Thanks for sharing this poem. I am almost finished with my post. I am in love with Bless Our Pets and can't wait to read it to my grandgirls.
"I am a rainbow spouting / from a whale's blowhole" What an empowering ending to get free from the briny prison. Wonderful image and poem.
ReplyDeleteIf this poem is recently autobiographical, I hope you are recovering, Irene! If it is not, you certainly had me in the belly of the whale with you -- longing for the tossing to end and emerge free via a rainbow spout!
ReplyDeleteLove this, Irene, and the art, too. Your last stanza and line are wonderful and can be applied to so many things a darkness before the dawn reminder.
ReplyDeleteHere's to getting free of the craziness inside this dark and briny world-whale where we're tumbling around and around!
ReplyDelete