Napo 26

Today was a bit tough. I have a busy day, and I woke up a little late this morning, so that cut into some of my writing time.
The prompt from This City is a Poem didn't really inspire either--what will be missed about me when I'm gone? I don't know, I couldn't write about that because it felt narcissistic.
So I checked out my plan B site, Napowrimo, which suggested writing with sensory details. It offered the poetry of Ocean Vyong as an example, so I took the first line of one of his poems and went with it.
I'm not happy with the results today, but I am happy I got something down on the page. I want to explore this image further--the mimosa butterfly dying on the shores of Sal del Rey, beauty in a hopeless place.
I might contrast it with blooming magnolia beside an oil refinery, a cardinal flying through the streets of east Houston.
I dunno.
Anyway, here's what I've got today:

On the Shore of Sal del Rey Lake

Because the butterfly’s yellow wing

Offers a flash of color

in this landscape, a palette

of grey skies, dark water,

sand like slate at the toes,

and the slow death of brown

overcoming a hot summer,

it draws the eye to the ground.

Here, the world is crystal,

Sparkles without color,

A thick crust of salt.

It flits in attempt to take flight.

The wind holds its breathe

And the landscape fills with silence

Until its broken by the distant caw

Of sandpipers, their ashen plumage

Blends into the ashen sky, so you hear them

Before you see them, like wisps of ghosts.

The air is brine atop the tongue,

The nostrils and the skin.

Breathe in and taste it everywhere,

These waves, the ancient glittering pyramid

Of white beneath this lake.

Grit. You can imagine salt

Becoming stone, the coarseness

Becoming you who dared to gaze

Into those slow and silent waves.

Breathe in the smell of emptiness,

A wide summer sky, slate clouds,

The cinereal water, no fish—

What could survive in a wasteland

Of salt, heat, and desolation?

Color seems destined to drown here.

Oh beauty in a hopeless place,

Why did you flit here? The butterfly

waves its mimosa wing to the sky

As salt encases it in white.