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Sweet Grass Song (NaPoWriMo #8)

My teeth were gone
By the time you
Called the vet with the
Needle.

Mine had become
Bran-mash-applesauce mornings and
Creaking out to the great oak.
Following it’s shade.

I wish I knew how to tell you
“Don’t cry,” when
you pressed our foreheads together .

How to say that
Those bones you found
Were Fred who
Pulled the mower for
His own hay before I and even you were born.

He claims he was dapple gray.
How could I know?

These days, our bones
Are resting.
Our present is a dream of the past:
Apple cores and chubby children’s hands.

Mostly, though, deep sleep and
Galloping through the
Tangled roots of the
Great oak.

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I Dreamed the Future (NaPoWriMo #6)

A smear in my conscousness,
Mere wisp of genius and
Traces where the eraser
Touched lightly.

What was that moment
When I solved the universe?
Aliens whispering non-words.
The pattern clicked.

I trace the arc of a
Red-tailed hawk,
Lazy circles belying
Life or death seconds.

Beneath the mulch-straw,
Garlic pushes its green snout up
While a vole
Noses by.

I dreamed the future and
Woke up to the past.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to take a line from prose that we love, make that line the title, write the poem based on the title, then change the title. I pulled from the opening of the brilliant Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter.” Something smeared on a blackboard became this little poem.