Scribes’ Tribe Scribblings

April 2nd’s prompt: Put yourself in someone (or something) else’s skin and write a poem about the experience. Who (or what) ever you become, please make that the title of the poem. If you’re Buddy Holly, your poem should be called “Buddy Holly.” If you’re the Bates Motel, your poem should be called “Bates Motel.” And so on.

Tree

Both gnarled and new,
I am dormant but alive.
Silent but awaking
As the days grow longer,
I breathe.
I am old but growing,
Ever stretching up and out and down,
Feet massaging the dirt and
Mud between my toes,
Sucking water through every pore.
Green is warm, brown is cool.
Bird’s feet tickle and
Rain splatters my new leaves
While every twig reaches for the sun.
I arch and sway in the breeze and
Hold against the storms.
Listen to the music.
The Dance is ancient and slow
But real.

–Candace

Farmhouse

I ain’t what I used to be.
Seen too many winters.
My steps creak, my porch is saggin’,
and half my shingles is gone.

But I seen a lot in my day.

Got to know folks.

That farmer and his wife–they came here
when they didn’t have a lick of sense.
She finally got some.
He never did.

They done like married folks back then.
Had babies, worked with the sun, worried over bills.

Waited for rain.

He plowed the fields, tracked dirt over my floors.
She planted flowers at my feet.

Sometimes in the evening, after he’d fall asleep,
she’d bake bread in my kitchen.

I always liked it when she baked bread.

They done some hard livin’ in their time–fifty-three years of it.
‘Til his heart gave out.

They told her to leave then, those kids of hers,
all grown up and moved to the city.
What do they know, anyway?

Now the youngest pulls up in his fancy car.
Threatens to tear me down again.
But he’ll forget about me.

When it’s my time to go, I think I’ll sink quietly
back into the ground, the scent of her flowers in my nostrils.

God, how I miss that woman!

–Amy