Thank you to Christopher Luna for his Tuesday Zoom poetry session. His prompts and collages inspire me to write and push through language and get to the heart of a poem. The poem I wrote for day two was inspired by the prompt Chris included from Poets & Writer's "The Time is Now" which you can find the same prompt here.
To RM in 2040
I hope to hold you as I do now,
to breathe deep the waves of
your essence, to build poems
around you as protection, but
with enough grit to raw your skin
like sand clinging to your sticky
ocean body. I hope for the ocean,
the Pacific to be exact, that grand
mouth swallowing the sky. I hope
to follow you through your first steps
of becoming a woman, to give you
hope in the space of your body,
that being a woman is not a cage,
but is an opportunity, a privilege.
I hope to build you a world where
it is easy to say safe and free in
the same sentence. I hope you will
discover within you the path to walk
into the sky. I hope you will gather
your language with care, as you
would food from the forest, some
words are edible, others poisonous.
I hope you learn the curves of your body
are a beginning that continues
into a beginning. I hope you learn
I’m not always right and being right
and wrong is a spectrum, a prism
of choices. I hope you understand
permission helps, but you don’t need
permission from anyone but yourself.
Britt, This is so lovely and strong. "...that being a woman is not a cage..." Yes. How lucky is she to be shown the world through the senses of a poet. She will soar.