Today's Inspiration & Writing Prompt

A KIND OF DOTING
Muriel Nelson
Strange beings we are.
Baby facemakers
playing the lifetime sport
of peek-a-boo.
Verify, verify, we say
believing our peeks
between cheaters' fingers. Look!
Everything's true
(in wedges). How magical, then,
are fingers and eyelids.
When they close, powers go free.
Wonderful, too,
are weaknesses. Like mine
for strengths out of view --
forces of tree candles, male cones,
maidenhair ferns,
bulbs, seas, yeast.
Our fondness for bubbling
in bread, egg whites, cream --
the air we love
to eat. Dearer still
is the air we can breathe
but not notice while singing requiems
and when, under our breaths,
pain arrives like sunset
in cathedrals, unhurried,
taking over, dismissing all worries
like children -- Yes,
you may go now, yes. Then black
as windows' lead,
pain looms. You try to slow
your breaths while it finds
that place behind the eyelids
and grows in the dark.
You endure. Then you see a stem --
a live path -- to a quiet iris.
WRITING PROMPT: Read this poem aloud. Then, using it as a trigger, write a response, or whatever else comes to you.