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| One of the many waterfalls we visited in Oregon. For the record, there were eleven switchbacks to get to the top. |
September's prompt was simple: write a poem using, or inspired by, the phrase "it was all my fault..." The prompt is courtesy of Colby Sharp, from his book, The Creativity Project. (Our own Mary Lee says it's on page 257.) In our ZOOM meetup, we laughed about things we'd done that were clearly, embarrassingly, undoubtedly our fault---like me spilling an entire red berry smoothie into my cute summer straw purse as I was juggling too many things on the way to a fancy event. Or me, accidentally telling my MIL as I put an item into the donation box, that I'd "never used" that thing, which OF COURSE she'd given me. (How, oh how, could I have forgotten?"
So I suppose I could've written about those blunders, but for me, they make better anecdotes than poems. What I wanted to explore was the crazy line that popped into my head when I thought about this prompt:
It was all my fault... that the river ran downhill.
What? That's not my fault, clearly. But isn't everything connected? How are we entwined with the natural world? I suppose I was thinking these odd things because I'd just finished the Mary Oliver documentary, Saved by the Beauty of the World. Her poems (and her life) declare that there is no separation. So I wrote about that.
It was all my fault...
It was all my fault
that the river ran downhill,
I should’ve told it
that the occasional hiccup
and spume as it bumbled
into stones
presaged the cliff
ahead
But if I had, then it would not
have found itself
stretched into steel ropes
that cut the earth with ease,
vibrating like vocal chords
proclaiming with throaty
belches that nothing
ends.
---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
And then, for fun, I thought of other parts of nature I was not responsible for, and wrote about my connection to them, too.
It was all my fault
that the sun wearily rose today,
wan and hung-over.
I was doing yoga, see—
and those salutations work like
a charm.
It was all my fault
she was dragged, dizzy
with heat from the muscled
arms of the night.
I was writing a poem, see—
and who can do that in the dark?
It was all my fault
the birds arrived next,
feathers awry and twittering
with hunger.
I was alive, see—
and their song
filled my belly with
now.
---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
You can find my Poetry Sisters' responses to "It was all my fault..." here:
Laura
