Introductory Post: A Minute for Poetry

Hi everyone,

This is my introductory post for 3SpeakTV. I am extremely excited, albeit a bit shy, to be here and to share with you all.

This is a novel experience for me, I am absolutely out of my comfort zone, but I am willing to learn and grow. I am excited by the growth opportunities here on this platform and so, today, I am taking the next step to share my work here as well.

As a novice on 3Speak, I look forward to learning from you all, to exploring this platform together with you, and to ultimately growing here.

My first piece tonight is a poem I wrote sometime before the pandemic in 2018/ 2019. It’s titled Random Thoughts on a Water Trip.

For context, this is reminiscent of my childhood when, as a young girl, we would collect our household supply of water as a family from the neighborhood standpipe because we did not have immediate access to running water in our pipes.

On late evenings, we would head out together with our bottles and buckets and gather around the standpipe, and while I waited on my turn, I would lie in the streets which would still sometimes be warm from the day's sun and look up at the sky, hoping to see a shooting star.

I believed then that if I saw a shooting star, I could wish for good fortune and our lives would change. And so, I would look up at the sky and there would be this whole range of thoughts just racing through my mind.

And so guys, I think this presents the perfect segue for my poem.

##Random Thoughts on a Water Trip

Are we as important as we think we are?

Lying on warm asphalt sheets,
Peeking through pinpricks of the navy blue blanket
Draped across the sky,
I wonder,
Am I living,
Or is this a dream?
Am I just hemmed in
between blankets and sheets,
Or am I just a tiny insignificant
thread in a magnificent design
that spans galaxies?

Lying in the streets,
I listen to the water dripping slowly,
Filling bottles behind me,
And I wonder,
What lies beyond the streetlamp
That deceptively promises me light,
Then weakens my eyes,
Hides my stars,
And shields the secrets of the night?

A full bottle stands in the street
And around it a pool of water
Where ants gather
To sip and chat and exchange news
As I muse.
If I could understand the tongue
Of lowly beasts,
Of what would they speak?
Would they be fascinated by my superior intellect,
Disgusted by my conceit?
Would they think me foolish,
Or would it instead be
That I am irrelevant
And they don’t even speak of me?

Lying on warm asphalt sheets,
Staring at the universe
I spy a shooting star
Blazing bright, inviting me to make a wish from afar.
And I do.
But my wish is a bit selfish
As is everything I know in this petri dish
We call Earth.

And so, my friends, this brings me to the end of my first post. I hope you enjoyed it and that you can stop by this way again.

Until the next time, please be safe.