Writing Prompt
Times when you wake with an ache in the belly
like a barren woman thinking, today
I shall be childless once again.
The heavy thrum of underworld engine falls silent
and crop circles are
just the way the wind blows the wheat.
The shining red Harley rusts
upside down
in the silted creek bed
so you resort to the old
sympathetic magic, the rituals of reaching
for Calliope’s fleeting sandals in the dark:
listen to the mellow jazz saxophone
become part of the painting
journal seven things you really would die for
how you would feel knowing
this is your last moment
this moment
when the longed-for beloved
lightning strikes
immolates the painting,
scorches the pansy bordered journal
pages to ashes
and you struggle
like a man unzipping his
very skin down the center from Chakra to crotch
forehead to knees
his bended knees
and the poem thrusts its bawling bloody head through
the membrane, tears with sharp-nailed
fingers to be born to be borne
will be born will not be
prevented from being
bringing in its soft hands
the significance of everything:
the mite in the mattress, the dance
of dust in a slant of sun,
even the wheat speaking
in circles around the burned and barren ground.
—Carol Clark Williams