Saturday, April 07, 2018

DAY 7: HOW PRIMAVERA TAUGHT ME YELLOW

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Today's prompt is, or at least could be, a doozy. GloPoWriMo "suggests writing out a list of all of your different layers of identity. For example, you might be a wife, a grandmother, a Philadelphian, a dental assistant, a rabid Phillies fan, a seamstress, retiree, agnostic, cancer survivor, etc.. These are all ways you could be described or lenses you could be viewed through. Now divide all of those things into lists of what makes you feel powerful and what makes you feel vulnerable. Now write a poem in which one of the identities from the first list contends or talks with an identity from the second list." 

Today, I feel like I have two identities: one that lives in a warm climate; one that doesn't.

I'm back in Canada, after saying goodbye to our winter home yesterday and then flying for hours. On the way to the airport I was stunned by the beauty of the primaveras which are very much in bloom right now. I've written about them many times before, and here goes again. The pictures today are all "window pix": from the car in the case of the primavera, and then from the plane in the case of the bay, which I think is "our" bay but if not I'm sure someone will correct me, and yesterday's sunset, and finally of the tarmac in Calgary where it was snowing and -12 C. 











So, what to write about. Mexican me vs Canadian me? Suddenly aware of colour me? Something like that. Again, today's isn't going to be very long as I have only a couple of days in the Big City (Vancouver) and I have places to go and people to see! 

How Primavera Taught Me Yellow

Just as I thought I knew red before I saw newly-unfurled hibiscus,
green before I saw Ireland from the air,
black before I experienced a sensory deprivation chamber,
blue before I saw a cloudless prairie sky,
I thought I knew yellow—
but that was before I saw primaveras against a hillside 
covering their world with light.

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2 comments:

Popular Girl said...

Loved the bright yellow hit of the photos and the poem. Welcome back to the not-tropics.
Rhonda

Linda Crosfield said...

Thank you Rhonda, and thanks for reading. Seems like a lifetime ago already!