Fairytale State of the Union

DAY ELEVEN
April 11, 2018
Good morning, everyone! I hope you’re ready for another fine day of poetry writing.

Our (optional, as always) prompt for the day is taken from one of the prompts that Kwoya Fagin Maples suggests in here interview: a poem that addresses the future, answering the questions “What does y(our) future provide? What is your future state of mind? If you are a citizen of the “union” that is your body, what is your future “state of the union” address?”
Happy writing!

Fairytale State of the Union

my State of the Union?
oh, it’s a story
about an apple-tree a goose

a sapling once a blossom
white pink-rimmed
innocent silken radiant
cheers angst-ridden
air-raid shelter crowd
sunshine

petals fall to the ground
or squashed in greedy hand
pressed for keeps yellowed pages
some old book
“A battle for…” Rome?

refugee kid learns
be attentive danger
your word disturbs denounces
disown body voice you
don’t belong

way-too-big traded-in boots
splash through puddles
plough through snowy fields
in class too noisy
stumble discarded
blackboard reached in mended socks

woodpecker secret friend
watches him daily hidden in tall grass
raise family in way-up nest
till all are free to fly
likes his clear staccato language
thinks I’ll study words

by heart learns fairytales
Nils and the Wild Geese
past future same
told sideways or in parallel

grows up travels arms slung round
747 white goose neck
sees wide world
helps others speak words
she could not
sees Nils hungers for an apple
remembers tree she’s meant to be
owns it tends it waters its roots

buds of words unfold
green red-cheeked poems ripen
harvest give away

apple-tree’s State of the Union?

future’s in every moment
fairy-tale stitched together all along
woven from photosynthesis
sunlight seeping into twigs of thought
leaves of words

an old tree now
still stubbornly half-wild
not much into pruning
trunk covered in moss
what’s the message?

let apples shriveled maybe
a little tart haphazardly sized
mellow into sweetness
for friends and strangers
passing by