PAD Challenge - Day 6 - Night's Power

Miami
Well, we've reached Day 6 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge. Are we having fun yet? Today's prompt was night. I started thinking about how often my poems incorporate night/day into them... Okay, let's not count...

So many things about night intrigue us. We think of night when bad things happen and when romance commences. We think of night as a time to party and a time to rest. Night changes for us at different stages in our lives. Even with it's changes, there are a lot of constants. I have to admit, night is a topic I enjoy writing about in my poetry...

So here's my night poem...

Night's Power

Standing on the shore
Staring into the inky night
The stars hiding their twinkle
The moon at our backs
Waves lapping gently at our ankles
Like a dog’s tongue
We let go of each other
To stand on our own
Awaiting dawn’s theft of dark
Casting the future
In bright oranges and pinks
The sun stealing the light
It lent the moon
As it prepares for another day
In the life we built
In the cool darkness of night
Where our vision of truth was clouded
Allowing us to embrace the moment
For it was all we could see
Until we could no longer see each other
In the inkiness where you tried to be
A Knight riding in to rescue me from myself
Only to find this distressed princess a warrior
Who saved you when you stumbled on your sword
I closed my eyes against the day
Waited until the twilight of the setting sun
The opening of my eyes showed you’d
Moved on to conquer a soul in need
Rather than stand hand in hand with me
As night fell once again
I looked out over the water
Took a step toward life’s promise
Little did you know
Little did I know

Night had lost its power over me
T. L. Cooper is an author and poet whose work aims to empower and inspire through an exploration of the human condition. Her poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared online, in books, and in magazines. Her published books include a collection of short stories, Soaring Betrayal, her Silhouette Poetry Series, and a novel, All She Ever Wanted. She grew up on a farm in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon with her husband and three cats.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Failure Isn't an Option, But...

The flip side of fear of success is fear of failure. Both end up in paralysis, have some of the same triggers, and share some of the same roots. It can be hard to discern which is which. I've struggled with both, and at times still do. Fear of failure for me was a need to be perfect. I equated perfection with love. I could only be loved if I was perfect. I could only be perfect if I was successful at everything. Failure wasn't an option. An "A" was never good enough in school. Everything I did could be better.  Early in my life I developed a fear of failure that at times has stifled my creativity, my progress, and even lead to complete inaction. In some ways my fear of failure contributed to my later fear of success. I started life confident that I could and would do whatever I wanted, but as I began to encounter those little digs that meant I could never be perfect and the harder I tried to be perfect, the more my imperfections haunted me. When I was assaul...
Read more

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Image
I recently read A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost . It's a beautiful book and one I'd been salivating over for a while, ever since I saw it in Costco several months ago. It is filled with poems that speak to my heart, my imagination, my core. I was thumbing through one day while reading - yeah, I was looking ahead - and came across Nothing Gold Can Stay , and the first thought that popped in my head was "Stay gold, Ponyboy." I stopped in my tracks as a shiver went up my spine and a smile slid across my face. I remembered in that moment the first time I read The Outsiders   by S. E. Hinton . The first time I read Nothing Gold Can Stay in the book, The Outsiders , the first time I heard the poem aloud in the movie , the first time I read the letter at the end of the book, the first time I heard the letter at the end of the movie... Robert Frost and The Outsiders are forever linked in my memory because of this poem. S. E. Hinton used Nothing Gold Can Stay to...
Read more

Benefits to Buying Books

Image
Last week I wrote about supporting authors without buying their books, so this week I want to talk about a few benefits of buying books. To be honest, there's this little voice in my head going "People need reasons to buy books... They're books. That's reason enough." Of course that's the writer and reader in me. The minimalist and anti-consumerist in me totally gets why many people don't want to buy books. Buying books is a commitment. It's adding another "thing" to your shelves, your home, your life. Let me be clear. I understand that people work hard for their money, and buying a book can feel like a luxury. I totally get it. I've been there. The rent, the mortgage, fuel, food should all be higher priorities than buying books. I remember days when I saved change for a month to buy a book. I'm not, in any way, proposing that people sacrifice necessities to buy books. There are advantages to buying a book. You own the book. ...
Read more