Trees Are Blushing "No"

Pokey.

That's the word Linda left out.

She made a pool, a stack, a pile. She fished, sorted, pulled, picked. And pokey got left behind (Are we surprised? Pokey is always fifty steps back, where we're likely to forget about it.)

When I saw the poem Linda made, without pokey, I commented that it would have been quite a different piece if she'd used that word.

It's a wonder, isn't it, how words have personalities?

This week, caught on the parkway, I sat thinking about the word hibernate. After all, winter is coming; trees are blushing "no" and weeping, but winter is coming. The word hibernate is one way to think about the nature of this change...

"Coming"

I like
the word
hibernate.

It is not
a killing word,
a crisis

word a
trauma word.
It is

a tender deep
warm primal
lay me

down to sleep
word, a nestle
into rest

word that
touches darkness,
unafraid.

Photo: Towering Pines at rehab center (yes, we've been spending many hours visiting Grandma since her knee surgery); photo by L.L. Barkat.

POETRY FRIDAY:
HighCallingBlogs Parking-Lot Poetry
Prairie Chick’s Just Breathe
Laura’s Trains
Linda’s A Stroll
Mom2Six’s Brakes
Glynn’s Slowing at the Faulkner Bookhouse
Monica’s Calligraphy Slows
Sarah’s The Dawn
Kelly’s escape
Bina’s Celebration of Slowing
nAncY’s book
Maureen’s Not a Rush
Marcus's The Price of Renewal