I just posted last night, but I’m getting a head start today on The Stafford Challenge (you can read about The Stafford Challenge in my first post). I’m starting to think that writing out “The Stafford Challenge” is a little cumbersome. I might start calling in “The SC” or “The Sta-Cha” or “The Staff-Chall” or “The artist formerly known as The Stafford Challenge,” I don’t know …. Any way, I digress.

Yesterday was my birthday (my 40th birthday! Yikes.) So that was primarily the inspiration for today’s poem. Something I love about poetry, even more than short stories, is the way you can use a poem to create an experience, almost like a painting or photograph, where you just take one scene, one moment, and reveal something profound there. I’m not saying I’m always successful at it, or that this is always my goal with a poem, but I love the potential.

Day 3!

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Birthday Fog

Bright bushy camellias turn brown overnight
when the Earth takes a cold turn.
I needed something warm today, light, less gray.
It’s my birthday, you know, God, show a little love.
It’s my birthday and the town turned sopping wet,
the narrow road slick under thick boots.
Overcast gloomy warm in January in a sort of muggy way
that leaves the leaves brown my heart longing and writhing in self pity
like that fat ugly worm on the driveway.
But in this endless cloud of gray warmth
the flowers killed by the world’s ice are coming out again from their tight buds,
letting go and dappling the fog with pink and red and pure-as-heaven white.
The Lord says the clouds are coming
and the gray cloud isn’t always something to lament.
Camellias peel back their full color even while their dead sisters linger,
reminders that He is bringing the dead back to life.
That even the flowers ache to find the light of the King’s face.