slow is wandering, the wandering, the wading through an old oak forest, the waking up and waking up inside the wondering of where this overgrown trail leads, if it might lead forward forever and ever and ever on your mind is time, and how slow is

Audio: https://sodaphonic.com/audio/tPviI7DreCpfyBnDIAmz for #writeout, inspired by The Valley by Jean Valentine https://poetrysociety.org/poems/the-valley

Can you imagine that single drop of rain, that watery blur, dancing tango inside the gravitational rhythm of air, the swirling, pulling, pushing, as it's falling – always it's falling - catching one another before finally letting go?

for #WriteOut and #YouAreHerePoetry, inspired by 'Can You Imagine?' by Mary Oliver https://www.nps.gov/places/poetryinparks1.htm as part of Ada Limon's You Are Here project

A view of the world begins from above, scanning eyes search signs for fish

for #writeout

Only the roots of the ghost tree remain -

soft echoes remembering its spindly arms reaching out

for every one of us, though we always steered clear

for fear that it might awaken to envelop us,

taking us, shaking us, making us disappear

for #WriteOut

An out-of-the-way place, a sacred space for contemplative quiet, a poet's grace imbues this alcove with verse not yet written, the wonder of the imagined art scattered like confetti on a broken bench near Gooseberry bushes where robins chatter

for #writeout

River, the rhythm

and the writer, remembers

The currents of time;

she dances to rhyme

for #writeout

Wanderers like you wonder what I'm thinking, as I rest my weary head here

I am silent, deep in thought, and you ought to join me, friend

Repose sends us into inner places, quiet spaces of song

for #writeout

Dance with us, Luna, in the pull of the tides but whose song will we hear, when you re-appear?

Luna, known as tungi, kuu, hli, cap, yoreh, maan, mwezi, bulan, marama, and ay -

We name you, silver one, to try to claim you as you slip our fingers and slide back into the folds of sky

for #writeout

Bring us the light, Sol, from your long distant gaze

your turbulent voice rides solar winds, like waves

We bask in forgiveness, close our eyes to the sky

And wait, impatient, at dawn, for each moment you arise

for #writeout

What she thought when she screamed was a cockroach was a stinkbug -

the scurrying species that periodically invades our classroom and elicits a shout;

I wrap the bug up in tissue, open the door, and toss it back out

for #writeout