Sam, a student who works as a barista in the early mornings, always has a wise perspective and a smile.
The Stranger: Sam
The Word: Clover
The poem I wrote:
Summer music hides in the leaves,
each song like a treed animal:
below, big kids on scooters
with lollipops in their cheeks.
I find in the grass a four-leaf clover
but don’t have a wish ready.
We are walking slowly, my girl
peg-legged because I lack skills
to argue her out of wearing one galosh
and one sparkle-shoe. We marvel
at the big kids, until one jolts away
from us as if we have frightened her
immensely, as if we are the scariest
ones in the woods. ‘I roared at her,’
my girl says before my invisible
question meets the air, and in an instant
I know my wish: Keep your voice,
I wish for her. Keep it loud, keep
it your own, whatever else you lose.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.
March 28, 2019 at 9:45 am
Finding Good Fortune
Once upon a time, actually, it was in 1877,
A little girl was wondering, she was just eleven. *
Did the fairies ever whisper that good luck may be found
Within the four-leaved clovers growing in the ground?
Some are entertained by laughter, if not suspicion and derision,
By what we’ve come to think of as ancient superstition.
But can the luck of four-leaf clovers be put to a real test?
Could ascertaining, done empirically, put this jest to rest?
Everybody knows that flowered clover of white and purple varieties
Most often have just three leaves in their vast ubiquity.
We, scientists today, those who among us, count
Say one four-leaf in five thousand seems about tantamount.
But this is just one aspect to the whittie-whattie of the fairy
We think there may be more to contemplation of this query.
Where exactly is the luck? Where exactly is its binding?
Is the luck within the clover leaf or is the luck found in its finding?
If you find a four-leaved clover does it mean you have good luck
Or will you have it thereafter because your luck is now unstuck?
To find research materials, we’ll be gamboling in fields
Then gambling in casinos and gauging all our yields.
More research is necessary. We’ll need funding ‘til it’s over.
So, until the grant runs out, we’ll be in a bed of clover.
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-leaf_clover
March 29, 2019 at 8:05 am
Gram
Her apron was stained
by her swipes of living
and some of her blood,
brick brown and dark
as rich spring mud.
I told her my own story
….life in soft clover.
She gazed at her pasture.
“Honey, clover is just not enough.
You need
grasses, forbs, sedges, legumes.
Even some weeds,
thistle might be right.”
What happens to us,
only clover-fed?
She spoke plainly,
“Bloat…will swell you dead.”
March 31, 2019 at 1:14 pm
Clover
I went barefoot that whole summer.
We joked about it, me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen,
But truth was, Dave was out of work again and these kids had got to eat.
Come nightfall I would stand out in the yard,
Feeling the clover patch cool on my feet,
Staring at the stars and wondering how I got there.
When Dave left, me and the kids
went to live with Mama in the city.
I got my own job and bought me some new shoes.
I paint my toenails red, just how I like ‘em.
But. I still think about that clover patch,
some nights.