Derivative

New vines of first bloom
give flora budding footholds for fauna,
wrenching the wheel from
man’s myopic grip

as drab warehouses again vanish
behind newly greening thickets,

spring reclaiming west ridge
between the people
and their stockpile of things,

illusion of balance
slowly restored once more,

save for incessant warning chimes
of cargo trucks backing in
to be filled or voided,

a sound mimicked by various birds
to spook predators into fearing man
and his stuff’s imminent, lethal
encroachment, and I am unsure

if nature is adaptive,
derivative, or prophetic,
but acoustically, it sounds better
when the birds drive the trucks.  

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Written for NaPoWriMo Day 18 Prompt:

‘This one comes to us from Stephanie Malley, who challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chpaters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s  table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Will you choose “the poem squash?” or perhaps “grocery weeping” or “the blue socks”? If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do? For example, the photo on my personal twitter account is a shot of a chapter title from a P.G. Wodehouse novel — the chapter title being “Sensational Occurrence at a Poetry Reading.”’

NaPoWriMo Day 18 Prompt

I chose “Derivative” which is the title of the seventh chapter of the novel Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee. I chose it because I’m actively reading it and I found the coincidental irony of this choice too kooky to pass up. I mean, that’s literally the chapter where my bookmark now lies.

P.S. – I’m currently still reading it, so don’t tell me what happens next, ok?