National Poetry Day - A prose poem to celebrate the autumn of life

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY!

Enjoy your poetry whether you are reading it, writing it or performing it. Here's one of mine. Rather apt for the time of year.

Autumn Years

These are the autumn days, shorter, yet more colourful than the sum total of spring and summer with their languid headiness of new love and hopeless romance. Love now runs deep, an earthiness beyond the ache of wanting. It is solid, freeing, wise with experience, yet not without its adventures!

My days come in flames of reds and orange when all my fruits are multiplied and come into season. Their juicy sweetness runs in my veins. I look back at those growing years. Am I wiser? I’m certainly older. So I grab the sunny days by the scruff, bathing in vibrant yellows, greens, browns and gold, and there is the scent guiding me home – wood smoke trailing to the sky. But I’m not ready yet.

I love the misty mornings, the mellow tones clouded in white. Then the sun bursts through and the trees are glory crowned. I waste no time; daylight hours are shorter, there’s a nip in the air. I walk through fallen leaves; gather shiny conkers, fir cones. The shedding will soon be over and I am not done yet. There will be dark, sunless days, cold winds through old bones, but I have no time for teary regrets. While there is colour in my days you’ll find me walking under the sun, the juice of autumn fruits staining my lips.

Writing: 201- Day 7 - Prose poem

I took a day off from poetry yesterday. The prompt did not inspire me but today I have tackled the prose poem using assonance and on the theme of 'fingers'. In my case it's just the one finger and more about what is on it.

This poem had it's beginnings elsewhere, another much shorter version exists. In this version I have taken the theme and expanded it to incorporate more and likened the two rings sitting together reacting like mother and daughters often do! I think this is the first prose poem I have ever written. I'm still not sure about it. I found it hard not to break it up into lines and stanzas. Let me know what you think.

The Ring

I twist the gold band feeling your essence when only warmth remains after a fire has died. I wear it next to my own wedding ring. They sing in unison recognising each other. This is all I have now. This and the memories, a wardrobe full of clothes, an album full of photos and I cling to them like an abandoned child for I am an orphan now.

Some days later my finger rejects the ring. The flesh swells as the two gold bands rub and snub each other just as we did in those falling out days, in the silences and the cheap flung words meant to hurt. Now I clutch at your remaining blouses and skirts, reluctant to part with every bit of you, fingering broaches and necklaces, remembering the lipsticks you bought in reckless moments when you were down.

I lay your wedding band aside as I fold your life into bin bags. I take what I can even the earrings I will never wear. I cannot bear to dispose of you like this. I grab the ring and place it back on my finger. It nestles close to mine. Whatever we have been through our bond glues us together. In the years that will follow I become stronger than you could ever know. But I don’t know that now. I only long for you. The moment I wake, after that second before I remember, the ache grinds into me.