{"id":9402,"date":"2016-11-22T20:02:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T20:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/?p=9402"},"modified":"2016-11-22T20:02:03","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T20:02:03","slug":"overlook-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/2016\/11\/overlook-a-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlook (a poem)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"overlook-1-ellen-wade-beals\"<\/a>Who wants to hear a political opinion?<\/strong> Not me. Overloaded, I won’t add to the mix.\u00a0 Which leaves me wondering what to post. I had something in mind but it’ll have to wait until next time. I’m hosting Thanksgiving<\/strong> and running out of time. I present you with my poem “Overlook,”<\/strong> which originally appeared in The Stony Thursday Book<\/em><\/strong>, a Collection of Contemporary Poetry, (No. 8, Autumn 2009), edited by Ciaran O’Driscoll, <\/strong>and published by The Arts Office of Limerick City Council<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

BTW, in case you missed it, I posted a poem (“Never marry a writer”<\/strong>)\u00a0 about NaNoWriMo<\/strong> on Medium<\/strong><\/em>–you can check it out here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Peace, love. and solace<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Overlook<\/strong>
\nHalloween tomorrow
\nand the gerbera daisy
\nplanted in May makes
\nits first appearance\u2014
\nI think I\u2019ll write a poem
\nabout it, how for some of us
\nit is almost too late when
\nwe decide to bloom
\nlike this gerbera daisy
\nfacing the faint light, heedless,
\njust like Aesop\u2019s cricket.<\/p>\n

Next day the frost doesn\u2019t
\ncome and the poem doesn\u2019t either
\nand that gerbera daisy, its pink head held high,
\nblooms, flattening its petals for full-face exposure.
\nI pull dead impatiens and coleus from
\nthe pot and the daisy stands straighter,
\nspreads it green dandelion-like leaves.
\nAnother one peeps from below,
\ncharmed like a snake dancing,
\nand the poem is about second chances;
\nhow it\u2019s better to have one week in November
\nthan none at all–the whole
\nbetter to have loved and lost thing
\nwithout the love part, with just the part about
\nhard scrabble existence in a clay pot.
\nSometimes it works out okay,
\nthat\u2019s what the poem would say,
\nblithe and happy as one can be considering death.<\/p>\n

Veterans Day and the two daisies
\nseem happy as weeds.
\nA ladybug I flick off the edge of the pot
\ndoes not fly away but arcs to the deck with gravitas.
\nI\u2019ll take the flower in, I think,
\nre-plant it to winter in my temperate home.
\nFirst I\u2019ll decontaminate it in the garage
\nthen re-pot it, and it\u2019ll soldier on.<\/p>\n

Now the poem is about how sometimes
\nwe need to be rescued and sometimes we are.
\nThe plant will flourish as the family\u2019s floral pet;
\nmaybe this should be like a children\u2019s tale–
\nThe Little Engine, The Ugly Duckling,
\nThe Castaway Toy\u2014happy endings all.<\/p>\n

Every time I park my car I remind
\nmyself to take care of that plant.
\nBut there\u2019s never any time
\nand soon it withers between
\nits dismal companions: a bag of charcoal and gardening shoes.
\nCome Christmas, I need room to hide the presents
\nand store the party supplies, so I do one last cleanup
\nand unceremoniously dump the pot
\ninto the closest patch of earth.
\nThe soil is a clump of roots
\nand drainage stones, and the empty pot
\ngoes on the shelf with the others–
\nits space on the floor now taken up
\nby a six of Stella.<\/p>\n

This poem is more likely now, more like life.
\nThe plant got a couple days in the sun–
\nnot enough–and the promise of something better–
\nnot fulfillment–and it ends up dead and recycled;
\na plot that is truer to the organic nature of
\nof any plant\u2019s story. We all die.
\nSome have summers
\nand others a final gasp in November.
\nSometimes the gardener is benevolent,
\nsometimes not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Overlook<\/a>
Overlook \u00a9 Ellen Wade Beals<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who wants to hear a political opinion? Not me. Overloaded, I won’t add to the mix.\u00a0 Which leaves me wondering what to post. I had something in mind but it’ll have to wait until next time. I’m hosting Thanksgiving and running out of time. I present you with my poem “Overlook,” which originally appeared in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,60,3124,1632,12,3126,2804,3127,3125,3123,39,13,7,16,2823,1478,1481,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-9402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-anthology","8":"tag-appreciation","9":"tag-ciaran-odriscoll","10":"tag-ellen-beals","11":"tag-ellen-wade-beals","12":"tag-gerbera-daisy","13":"tag-nanowrimo","14":"tag-never-marry-a-writer","15":"tag-november-daisy","16":"tag-overlook","17":"tag-photography","18":"tag-poetry","19":"tag-solace","20":"tag-solace-in-so-many-words","21":"tag-thanksgiving","22":"tag-the-arts-office-of-limerick-city-council","23":"tag-the-stony-thursday-book","24":"tag-weighed-words","25":"entry","26":"has-post-thumbnail"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9402"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9407,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions\/9407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}