Rosemary Nissen-Wade #22: Resilience

Resilience

Is it a bird that, battered by storms,

rises again to soar on strong wings?

Is it a beast of burden – an ox, say –

that rests at the end of the day

to recover its strength and resume?

Is it, perhaps, a sliding, zig-zagging snake 

moving through grass unseen, at speed?

Or a tough lizard with hard skin

who can freeze to invisibility, then dart …

or shed its trapped tail, only to grow a new one?

Does it even describe me, still here after all?

Does it describe humanity? And is that good?

I like to think it will be our planet

long after the batterings, the burdens,

the need for speed and hiding, 

and maybe our very selves, are well gone.

Image © Sharyn Williams 2014. This is the cover illustration for one of my e-chapbooks and must not be reproduced without permission. I thought it a good illustration for this poem too.

The poem is written in response to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Resilience.

Rosemary Nissen-Wade #18.2: I Dream

I Dream

I dream of a great wind

swelling up from the depths of the earth –

to sweep through all countries, all peoples, 

rushing and cleansing,

blowing away war and hatred

the ubiquitous guns

ignorance and prejudice

selfishness and greed,

expelling with the force of a hundred hurricanes

all the ridiculous games of destruction

we invent and perpetrate,

all the hideous follies we create

in our diseased minds

and teach to our children 

so that these evils

go on and on and proliferate ... 

but this is a dream,

which fades to a slow twilight

in which there is no renewing fury,

no windstorm of pure intense breath

carrying all such horrors before it

into annihilation, leaving a green space

for peaceful, lovely regeneration,

a new unfolding of the world

as it was, once upon a time, 

or could be ... I dream

of a mighty wind.

Written in response to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Wind Power