Day 3 of 30 of Global Poetry Writing Month and National Poetry Writing Month
April is Global Poetry Writing Month, so I am challenging myself to write one poem a day for 30 days. Yesterday, I wrote about a family portrait. Today's NaPoWriMo challenge is to write a poem in the form of a fan letter. My fan letter is to the sea.
“Ode to the Sea”
Dear Sea,
I have always been your fan.
when I was three
I saw you first in 2D:
farmhouse hallway
etched blue on
the globe that I kept
spinning & spinning & spinning
with tiny fingers,
rushing all the continents
through winter & spring & summer & fall,
passing the seasons
until I grew up.
You like to draw.
I always looked for the boot you etched for the place of pasta,
EE-ta-lee --
the way it matched the larger boot
in the place of gwa-ta-MAHL-ah
where Uncle Larry was a missionary
You were everywhere.
Even before I learned you covered ¾ of the earth,
Even before my body floated and crashed in your waves,
Even before the astronauts sent us the
ocean-blue earth image from space,
I felt your pull.
I was not the only girl
drawn from her midnight bed
while the rest of the house was fast asleep.
Stepping out, barefoot onto the cool grass
a whirling dervish
twirling in her shimmery blue
nightgown,
spinning like a globe
orbited by
moonshadows, moonshadows.
Oh,
sea-tides.
I love you most in ah-RAY-bee-ah.
Ancient EE-gipt,
parting your waters
so a wandering tribe
can walk on dry land
Even now
with all the
guns & battles in PAHCK-ee-stan, the
bombshell explosions in Eye-ran and Eye-rack
still you reach
around,
cupping the shores
with water hands,
holding it
like Mother IN-dyah.
even when mermaids
sprout fins and grow gills
even when mere mortals are pulled to the Beyond
with a force as strong as the tides,
our feet are
caught in land grasses,
held by the ever-strong gravity of place,
land-bound.
© Kat Shamash, April 3, 2016
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