Embarrassment

Here’s a poem I wrote in class along with the kids.

We brainstormed some emotions.

Our task was to write a poem that used a metaphor or simile to help us understand an emotion more deeply.

Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash

 

Embarrassment

Embarrassment is a bright searchlight
that sweeps the ground
around the prison yard fence,
searching
for a bit of cloth
in the grass,
a color
that does not match,
for any movement
to reveal
the prisoner who
might try
to escape.

–Steve Peterson

Ice

On a Christmas Day hike up the Cascade River on the north shore of Lake Superior, I walked and wrote this poem in my head thinking that, sometimes, I am this river.

Ice

river water rolls under the ice, over the rocks,
falling, falling on its way to the lake

drawn downward, rolling stones
round boulders and over –

the lake does not fill up
the river does not run dry

even now, in winter, when snow lands
firmly on the ground and stays until April

when the trees have given up their leaves,
their roots frozen in the ground

water slides
beneath the ice

– Steve Peterson

joy is a tall tree

I’m still playing with the homemade metaphor generator that I talked about in the last post. In this post, I used Taylor Mali’s suggestion to continue the metaphor with the phrase, “which is to say.”

Photo: Steve Peterson

joy is      a     tall tree
which is to say

a tree         doesn’t     grow     overnight,
and
the     best things            take     time,
and
while     a forest     is
large
and         often     beautiful,
you can
lose     your     tree
inside     it

Like a Tree

Heavy Work Maureen Barlin via Compfight

This prose poem is one I wrote several months ago based on an event I witnessed as a young man. I revised it recently and wanted to collect it on this site. I still like it.

Like a Tree

Once upon a time I was young and on the lookout for metaphors. They’d appear like boxelder bugs; I found them everywhere. About that same time, I hiked up the Rose Lake Cliff that overlooks Canada. On top, 400 feet above almost everything, the wind blew hard and fast all the way from Lake Winnipeg. It pummeled an old spruce tree that grew like Yoda from the rocks, battering it this way, yanking it that way. I imagined how many winters this tree had endured, exposed to the icy blast of Arctic snow, how it tapped a meager living from the cleaved rock. Its will to live was great. Its fortitude vast. It personified sisu, a Finnish word my aunt Nedra said means perseverance beyond reason. While I observed and pondered, the tree uprooted in the gale, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff. Several years later, I scrubbed greasy fry pans deep beneath a Minneapolis restaurant. Turns out, one of the guys I worked with was just like that tree. I think I understood him better having met him earlier as a metaphor.

Ukulele Life

in architecture, people are always movingCreative Commons License craig Cloutier via Compfight

 

Ukulele Life

Her practiced bow
placed on the string
sings clear and bright.
Yet, you? No long-song
rings into the night.

In your ukulele life,
each plucked note
hovers thin and short.
Your music endures
in the blur of a hand.

– Steve Peterson


I wrote this poem in the comments section over at Mary Lee Hahn’s Poetrepository. I got to thinking about how some lives sing like violins and some plunk like a ukulele; both have their beauty, yet each requires such different technique.