WALKING AND FALLING AT THE SAME TIME

Remember the warm flat river
which smelled like walnuts,

the hum of the motor idling
the peel of wet rope through your hands

how it felt to bob, cradled
in the life jacket's embrace

then the boat would pick up speed
and you'd rise out of the water

feeling it thrum underfoot
as the cliffs whirled by

falling asleep is that way too
you have to learn how to float

in these warm waters, to hold fast
to the rope towing you forward

until the great green world blurs
and you fly away

This week's ReadWritePoem prompt, the therapeutic cleanse, invites us to look over our recent work and identify repeated words, themes, stylistic quirks...and then try to write a poem which doesn't lean on any of those usual crutches.

So this week's poem has a different setting than my other mother poems: we've moved out of the nursery! (The subject matter is related, though -- can you see how?) And I tried not to repeat words or images from the other poems in the series. The title is also longer than my titles usually are; it's an allusion to a Laurie Anderson piece.

The one place where I found I couldn't break with my old habits is the visual prosody of the lines on the page. I tried writing all in one big block, but the poem naturally shaped itself into couplets, so I let it take that form. Otherwise, though, I think this "spa day" was good for my writing; I hope you agree!

As usual, you can see what others did with the prompt by reading the links in the comments at this week's Get Your Poem On post.

[walkingandfalling.mp3]