This morning I sensed an elation
driving past the cracked, crumbling fields
where the earth upturned dark in the purpling light,
where crows speckled the treeline, posing as dark little islands
atop yellowing leaves. Today I awoke a little bolder—
How should the earth be written?
As a soft feather, becoming swept up at the first gust?
Perhaps, a root system, examining the elements
as they burrow—always chemistry, always a science?
Shall I write myself as the white washed blue of a crested wave,
eternally beating against rock, chipping it down to its smallest beauty?
Or as the ethereal underpass, leading to the lava underground?
If I choose to write one story, how many others am I ending?
I would not be surprised to break,
to have my limbs stretched out across the lake, to twist and flounder
as I search for the exact creak in the wood I remember.
Each day the flood renews, a new sun breaks across the landscape.
What can we do to keep capturing it,
but be there to watch it arch over the skyline, to build a life
from the rocks chipping away slowly?
Aleigha Kely
This poem was one of 6 poems entered by my daughter, Aleigha, in the Oldenburg Writing contest 2019 and she won 1st place. #proudmom
Allison Stevens 