PROMPT 4: Write a history poem.
History
told his story.
Hers was left
untold.
Till I saw the moon
in the wandering stream
and my foot
came down on it all.
I felt the coldness
of his grave.
I felt her icy
grip.
Yet time cannot
bring them back
to kiss
on the broken bridge.
The worn edges and bent corners
told of their repeated connections
where she had held it lovingly
slowing fingering the words
of its story,
the story
that she believed.
Then a friend
ran with urgency
to show her another writing
that showed things
from a different point of view.
She devoured it,
shocked and provoked and betrayed,
the words denying what she knew
to be true.
But this was clearly labeled:
NON-Fiction.
Her story
now tainted,
her reality defined
by the words
of her friend
and a writer
who she never met,
but now blindly believed.
Without a sideways glance
she threw her love in the trash.
I fly to the water
desiring the wisdom
of the old lake
her wrinkled ripples
urging.
My mouth closes
at each wave
as it washes over me
then gaping open
my head up
like a hungry seagull
when my needed breaths
must come.
Back on shore
I brag of my experience,
a youth seduced,
with a juicy wet
story to tell.
Google Earth
has a layer
for everything
from stores,
to roads,
to trees.
But zoom
in closer
to find a techno God,
in Armageddon mode,
has deleted
all the people.
On your next
simulated trip,
zoom out further
to heaven’s layer
and see if I am there.