Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three. Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest having to do with prose. I realized January 19ththat I will turn twenty-four in three months, and since I started writing some poems before it’s too late: forty-six poems at twenty-three. I’ll post each Friday until the last week of March, then I’ll post one a day until my birthday on April 30th. Here’s number 5:

Dothraki call it their sea
Another named her “amber waves of grain”
Both are wrong

She claps to me, though I know not what to call her
She waves, but she’s not waves
Greeting her greeter
Sways? Yes, but Pentecostal-prays too.
(not the tongues part, but the hand-raising)
Flutters
Sputters
Shakes

All that, we could go on…

When I was still in college,
I looked out third floor’s window
To my old oaken friend
If each leaf made a hand
Each breeze twitched a muscle
Then she stood their applauding me,
Tall grass blades clapping beside her and
I remembered…

All the trees of the fields will clap their hands.