The 2015 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem – Day 27

Good Monday, poem readers & poem writers.

The 2015 Progressive Poem in Kidlitosphere’s National Poetry Month Celebration swims here today.

In writing my addition & revising & I felt appreciations to each Day 1-26 poster.
And the most appreciation is directed to novelist & poet Irene Lantham,
originator & organizer of this creative challenge.

In summary

Our water spirits are father and daughter (such a surprise!) & the tide turned.
Yesterday, Sunday, we learned from the educator Brian Kelley –

Straining for fading incandescence, flecks of silver, his eyes and hands clasp cold silt,
flakes of sharp shale seething through fingers – crimson palms stinging.

I linger over his rich terms
incandescence
cold silt
sharp shale
crimson palms
And follow this action! Straining, fading, seething, stinging.

Don’t you want to get back to middle school for one of Brian’s
classes? You can at least sit on the sidelines over at Walk The Walk.

Find the poem to date with today’s catch of lines, just below, alongside Brian’s words from Sunday.

Tomorrow, who sings our sea shanty? None other than National Poetry Month’s sing-along sensation, creative Amy at The Poem Farm whose Sing That Poem! series has everyone warbling (me less wonderfully than Amy.) Amy, your turn to navigate!

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TO BE TITLED,
2015 Poetry Friday Progressive Poem by an assembly collected by poet Irene Latham

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.

Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms.
Her hair flows, snows in wild wind as she digs in the indigo varnished handbag,

pulls out her grandmother’s oval cuffed bracelet,
 strokes the turquoise stones,
and steps through the curved doorway.

Tripping on her tail she slips hair first down the slide…splash!
She glides past glossy water hyacinth to shimmer with a school of shad,
listens to the ibises roosting in the trees of the cypress swamp

an echo of Grandmother’s words, still fresh in her windswept memory;
“Born from the oyster, expect the pearl. Reach for the rainbow reflection on the smallest dewdrop.”

The surface glistens, a shadow slips above her head, a paddle dips
she reaches, seizes. She’s electric energy and turquoise eyes.

Lifted high, she gulps strange air – stares clearly into
 Green pirogue, crawfish trap,
startled fisherman with turquoise eyes, twins of her own, riveted on her wrist–

She’s swifter than a dolphin, slipping away,
leaving him only a handful of memories of his own grandmother’s counsel:

“Watch for her. You’ll have but one chance to 
determine—to decide.
Garner wisdom from the water and from the pearl of the past.”

In a quicksilver flash, an arc of resolution, he leaps
into the shimmering water
where hidden sentries restrain any pursuit
and the bitter taste of impulse rushes into his lungs.

Her flipper flutters his weathered toes – Pearl’s signal –
Stop struggling. The Sentinels will escort you

He stills, closes his eyes,
takes an uncharacteristic breath of…water!

Released, he swims, chasing the glimmer of the bracelet
Gran gave the daughter who reveled in waves.

Straining for fading incandescence, flecks of silver, his eyes and hands clasp cold silt,
flakes of sharp shale seething through fingers – crimson palms stinging.

A sea change ripples his shuddering back.
With a force summoned from the depths, her charged turquoise eyes unsuffer his heart

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