19

I'm thankful for the monthly poetry prompt at PoetsOnline.org. I've turned a corner into a busy life season where I'm not doing much regular blogging—or even much creative writing—and often the only thing that sends me here is the crafting of a poem. 

I still process life events in poetry, but when I don't make time to do so, a prompt from Poets Online will force me to take up the pen and bend my thoughts around another's idea. 

This prompt required us to "consider the island metaphor, our shared world and the inevitability of death. Donne loved metaphors and that should be a starting place for you. Perhaps, an island suggests other metaphors to you. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, the island is a metaphor with multiple layers as it represents isolation, both physically and psychologically, away from the regular world where the characters are stranded." 

Below is my offering for this "island" prompt, entitled 19.

19

Workshop staff.
This was my humble title
All those many years ago.
We didn’t do it for the money,
Most assuredly.
Nor a resume stop.
(Who wants to settle at “staff,” after all.
And what workshop?)

The visionary baby of one man.
One teacher.
At one school.
With a handful of student visionaries
Following him around
Leading

That first year
It was hot and buggy
Surrounded by trees
And another man’s dream

Deeply buried somewhere
In all of us

For a moment, at least.
A snapshot in time.

“No man is an island”
We dutifully sang.

Amid suffocating insecurity
And breathless hope

We clung to the longing desire
For a promontory
And someone to walk the narrow road
To find us
And never let go

“No man stands alone.”
Our tender hearts
Fervently believing with the zeal
Only possible
In youth
And memory
And the naïveté of dreams

Can your joy really be joy to me?
Your grief really be my own?

Even now, a prick of that dream
Moves to resurrect itself.
Hope still clings to that little taste
Gasping like a banked fish
Desperate with hope

Fast forward decades
When the world—
Wild-eyed with manufactured fear—
Wheeled around

Pivot to strike
Wolves with clubs
In masks

It tolls for thee.

*This poem was selected for publication on the site. https://poetsonline.org/archive/arch_island.html