It’s National Poetry Writing Month again. I do so love a challenge, and while I make no promises to write to any particular prompt or style, today’s poem was inspired by napowrimo.net’s prompt which invites us to write a prose poem including conversation and involving the body. I was inspired by Robert Haa’s “A Story About the Body” to create my own conversation concerning our physical forms.
The green light casts a galaxy on wet asphalt as we drive through the cemetery gates. Road noise creates a welcome vacuum, which my son soon breaks: “Father looked funny. He didn’t have his usual grin.” Well, there’s a good chance they broke his bones to give him a smile, I think. And his eyes, sunken gardens, planted in their sockets, reduced to seeds. But I couldn’t tell a seven-year-old these things. “Cosmetics can only compensate for lack of color, dear.” I say and steer, but when I hear weeping, I am reminded that life is constant motion — head, shoulders, limbs, toes — and the eyes adjusting to movement. While breathing, we are celestial bodies, but in death, we shrink back to molecular stardust.
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