NaPoWriMo Day Four: Simone Chalkley – Five Senses

For today’s prompt Simone Chalkley invites you to get outside and engage the five senses.

Nature Is You 

Go out anywhere into nature. It can be a garden, a park, a wood, a field, the beach, by the river, anywhere at all outdoors that is hopefully not too noisy or too near traffic. 

If you can’t get out, choose a favourite potted plant indoors or use pictures or videos on the internet or TV or in a book. Have paper and pen with you or a phone to type a message or record your spoken words. 

Write using the senses, five things. One that you see, one that you hear, one that you smell, one that you can touch, and, if you can, one that you can taste. Or you can pick one of the senses and write five things to do with that. Or you decide on any combination of these things that comes naturally to you. There is no right or wrong. 

Do any of these things remind you of the human body in some way? Pick one at a time and focus on it. Can you feel or see life flowing through it? How? Can you describe how it is the same as you? If it does not feel human, does it feel alive in some other way? Can you imagine it communicating with something else that you have picked out? How? Just have fun with it and see where it takes you.

Ephemera
 
My sky is your sky is our sky. 
When I look to the stars, I know you see the same as me, the same as we.

My sea is your sea is our sea.
When I look to the horizon, I know somewhere in the distance you are gazing back at me.

My earth is your earth is our earth.
We tread the same ground. My feet tread where yours once trod. We take the same paths over centuries, thinking we’re discovering something new, but we’re not. 

Human palimpsest. 
Repetition. 
Sameness. 

We have all leaned against this same log and taken the same photo. We all go to the same beauty spots and think we’re doing a new pose. We all hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We all take a bite out of the moon or hold it between our forefinger and thumb.

We think we are special. And we are. We all are. We are all a part of this wonderful earth. 
It is no coincidence that we all look the same.

Our features reminiscent of Earth’s wonders. We carry them everywhere.
 
Hair a head of twisting curls, tendrils framing a face.
Sapphire eyes, deep shining pools of water. 
Eyelashes tickle, fine hair on a caterpillar.
Crow’s feet of age and wisdom.

A fist unfurls, a hand a once crumpled leaf, opens, reveals thick lines and fine creases indelibly etched from a life lived labouring, tilling the soil, a smooth, shiny leather. 
Nails ridged and rough, the elements scored them, dried them, strata. 
Knees craggy rocks, sharp, angular. Legs blotchy, mottled, as pebbles.
In arms, blue veins, running rivers, tributaries obscured beneath opaque skin.

If the earth bleeds, we all bleed.

My sky is your sky is our sky. 
When I look to the stars, I know you see the same as me, the same as we.

My sea is your sea is our sea.
When I look to the horizon, I know somewhere in the distance you are gazing back at me.

My earth is your earth is our earth.
We tread the same ground.

We are Earth’s ephemera. Our lives fleeting moments, here and then gone, while the Earth remains.

Simone Chalkley

Simone Chalkley has previously had poems published in local Cambridge publications Allographic and Edgewords as well as on the FenScapers blog. She has also performed them live in a variety of places, including The Wild Strawberries tent at Strawberry Fair and the Ely Arts Festival. She has recently written for radio and theatre, and wants to conquer TV next! Her favourite topics are nature, people, and social justice, which actually covers a great deal. 

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