Day 17 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Draft #1 - I used the prompt to write a poem in which you very specifically describe something in terms of at least three of the five senses and an older prompt from Sacred Way Poets Workshop - Write a poem using all three of these – “dancing, a pitch-black room, and the smell of lilacs”  

Drawn From The Smell of Lilacs

This pitch-black room is darker than that cave

deep under an eastern meadow,
which holds the dull fecal scent of decay
mixed with full nostril odor of old damp earth.

Where 23 years ago I brought my children,

their glossy checks, straw-strewn hair,
worn scuffed shoes, and torn play clothes,
their hesitant eyes which grew
round and large when all light left.

My daughters smooth hands, now far away,

red and chapped from years of dishwater,
bound by the rings of their days,
their soiled cuticles, dark from
tunneling their own lives.

I am drawn again to the darkness

unknown above ground,
the lure of a flowing stream
which sings an old amniotic lullaby
I can almost remember.

Still, even without light,

I somersault at noon,
swallow the salt of gone years,
bless the days still left for me,
dance to the rhythm of lilacs.