Ed Meek’s “How to Skip Stones” and Wendy Drexler’s “And I Say Yes to the Way the Grass”

How to Skip Stones

by Ed Meek

Do you remember keeping your eyes open
for flat, oval rocks to pocket
on walks to the pond?
Saving the best for last, you’d lean
to one side and flick your wrist
flinging the stones just off the water.

It isn’t easy to defy gravity
and make a stone skip like a tern
and skim weightless
soaring without wings,
touching down like a plane
while you count until it sinks
and heads to rest anonymous
on the bottom.

Maybe that’s what we’re after
as we try to stay afloat,
skimming on the surface,
defying the odds
for the fleeting feeling of flight.

Previously published in North of Oxford (December 12, 2020)

* Writing Prompt: “Skipping Stones” is a poem about how to skip stones. Write your own “how-to” poem. Here are some ideas for how to get started.

And I Say Yes to the Way the Grass

by Wendy Drexler

needs the soil and the soil needs the grass,
the way the candle needs the wick
and the wick needs the candle. Yes
to the way the lion and the buck need
one another, and the bluebird the caterpillar.
To the ocean that needs a shore for its waves.
Yes to the cymbals for needing the violins
and violins for needing the winds,
to the four winds and the sixteen
quarter winds and the thirty-two winds
it takes to make a compass rose.
Yes to each rose petal that needs the other
forty petals to be a rose, and to the rose
for enfolding all the petals before
letting them die for the new bud.
And I say yes to the stars closing their eyes
at the same time to share the darkness,
yes to the viaduct of rain in the valley
of thirst, yes to the time we live with
because we’ve got to live with it,
yes to loving better, to coming in
from anywhere.

Previously published in Solstice Literary Magazine (National Poetry Month 2020).

* Writing Prompt: List as many examples as you can that illustrate our interconnections with one another—between our minds and bodies, between ourselves and others, among other creatures, and in the natural world at the micro and macro level. Then use anaphora to tie your lines together. Choose a repeated phrase that resonates with the examples you’ve listed. Let metaphor and simile emerge as you weave your lines together.

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