Field Notes from my Juliet Balcony
A prose poem on noticing the world as it spins soundlessly.
This week’s poetry feature written by
as part of our Witnessing the World Come Alive poetry submissions series.Field Notes from my Juliet Balcony
Pink petals plop from a stem that will never regrow. A flower that blooms only once in a year. I immortalize each fallen petal by tucking them into the pages of a secret journal. Closeted away from anyone who knows the tyranny of language, the redundancy of it.
Immortal they shall be - pink petals pressed against blank white pages. White pages, the nakedness of it. Holding something so fragile, so eternal.Wordlessly, they watch the ascent of the April sun. Static yet fleeting.
If you listen carefully, you can even hear the earth spinning soundlessly into its axis. Tilted like dervishes, dancing to some divine choreography. Once in a while, during the tiniest fraction of time, you’ll hear her pause, the solitary earth, waiting for no one in particular. Not even her lunar lover. Still.
When the sun casts its longest shadow, the orchid’s bare branches silhouette the perfect shape of a moth in flight.
And only now, in the quiet gravity of my forties, do I begin to see: that shadows are genuinely beautiful — even darkness holds its own gentle grace, an unbearable weight of beauty.
Thank you, Ash!