A Whispered Shout

Poems have never been something I've gravitated to naturally with my writing. I prefer verbose novellas. I can't seem to condense everything I want to say into a poem, but within the last year their appeal has worn me down and every now and then I find myself writing some. Granted, I write many more when I'm required to in my college creative writing classes, and then drift away from them when I'm not in class, but then there'll be that shock of inspiration like a jagged bolt of lightning weaving to earth, searching with its prodding finger for something to strike...and then it does, and it happens to be the tree above you, and you're filled with its pulsating white noise and can't help but let it escape you through the pen, through the pores in your mind. And later on you'll go back and think, how did I think of that?

Such was the case when I was doing last night's supper dishes. The first few whispers of a poem drifted around in my mind like blizzards of dust flying up when the dog flops onto the couch, and you watch them, perhaps try to grasp them but your fingers only brush against your skin, capturing nothing. With one more dish to do I abandoned the luke-warm, almost sud-free water and put pen to paper, scribbling a few lines on a randomly turned empty notebook page. Later on, after I'd finished the dishes, I went to my laptop and translated my less than stellar handwriting and worked on the poem further.

But I can't truthfully say the poem was all random, because it was actually inspired from a snippet of a paragraph in a story thought I worked on a couple weeks prior. Said paragraph went like this: "The wheat field behind the historic storefronts whispers to me in a thousand voices, the century's old maple and birch trees bordering the apartment whisper back. As a child I had wondered if God could hear nature whispering to him, their divine creator. If the field's and trees whispered in a million voices, could God hear and respond to them all? What about the crashing waves and the screaming tempest? The spray of sand and the delicate sway of wildflowers?"

As you may've guessed from that paragraph, the main character, Henrietta, in that particular novella, is remarkably like me. I wonder the same things, and much of my inner wondering's transfer themselves into the minds of my characters. But I believe that every character a writer creates each parts of herself/himself in them. Which I think is the beauty of it! Fiction is a beautiful thing. As one author put it "I love creating worlds on paper." That is exactly what we as writer's are doing, and I know I will never tire of it!

Before I digress into yet another rambling blog post about writing, I will post my poem below. It has the same title as this week's blog post. I love the title of the poem, for it provokes thought and makes one pause. Which is something I always aim for when creating titles.

A Whispered Shout

Undulating sea of gold
shivers upon a hillside,
summer's heat folds down,
a wool coat breaking free,
smothering the curious child
who broke it from its tomb.
Plumes of dust swirling like
blizzards breathed from the
decaying mouth of time itself
dance in yellowed light sifting
through wavy windowpane.
A whispered slithers, each voice
contained within matching
field's fluid motion, seeking
rhythm, a point to their whisperings.
Each stalk parts, crushes, sways
and bends, whispers escalate,
climbing the hill until it curls back upon
itself, what falling forward, casting out
the voices. They move on.
Dense and rutted sentinels watch the fields
dance, lifting their myriad layered skirts high,
flashing a length of toned thigh, or intricate
garter aching for a rough finger and a sly grin.
Their whisperings ring deeper, starting at the heart
and weaving along veins thick and thin until the end
they reach, bursting forth into the solid wind where
they float aimlessly. Sliding, stumbling in summer heat
the voices mix with rock and clay tumbling over the lip
of the earth, the wind the tongue that cleans it from
its teeth which bare themselves within snarling
tempest below. They splinter against jagged rock,
smooth surfaces slick with transparent blood,
sand shifted and drenched, an expensive dress
Pulled by wind, soaked by rain, no regard given.
The whispers reach out in spray of white
against earth's crater edge, in the greedy
gathering of water pulled beneath the folds
of foamy black water like devil's liquor only
to be hastily thrown back in crazed arch of
white. Is the water made holy again? Again
it melds with darkness below, perhaps
catching its reflection, and resigning itself.
Outline of days lived off land captured
only by delicate lace of rust clinging to
nothing, scent of churned earth a memory,
wind weaving in and out, in and out, steady
fingers of soft wrinkles mending another patch.
Chains, straps, bolts and buckles tossed amidst
solemn country silence, whispers of dense bones
buried far away, perhaps wind is steady cold
of hooves leading from barn to freshly plowed field.
These skeletons of rust can plow no more, their
only purpose to watch rainbows dance gaily above,
each growing higher, each bursting forth like bands
of color staining sky's swollen clouds, an angry splinter
of lightning revealing summer's beauty beyond,
lightning fades, thunder recoils, whispers can return.
Petals arch outward, overlapping one another, worshipers
crowded together, each reaching out in wild abandon.
Here wind plays, sawing on summer's violin, plucking
the steel facade of the banjo. Then a burst of wind,
fresh from its wheat field frolic, dives within the
field's blooming heart. As it dips to soil
long abandoned by pointed tongs of metal
and blunt impact of hooves it looks above,
imagining the blended watercolor of flowers
forming a canopy above to be umbrellas of
every color gathered together, grinning children
below, their rubber-clad feet sloshing in puddles.
Sun dips through, a curious finger melding the
painting, colors bleeding into one another,
marring light purple, creating another one.
This is the whisper the wind has been waiting for.
for it is the true whisper of summer. A lone
string is pulled back, a single chord struck upon wood.
All the whispers rise to a singular voice, dancing above and below.