Two sides of the same coin

She spins like a tossed
coin wavering,
toppling. Heads this time.

Caught on the other side,
sifting light
resolves and shuts.
Clanging door stirs dust.

He draws down shadows,
firm, solid shade.
A favorite chair,
a lamp just so.

Choices slip, resettle.
A creed carried over
crevasses. Hope or habit
reaches for heels, clawing.

The fickle heart knows
no schism, it falls or soars
and grapples with change
and sighs for novelty.

I haven’t seen this sun
Before. I like it.
Buy it for me, baby.




I wasn’t going to work on anything for this week’s prompt at the changed Poetry Thursday, but bless Dana and Liz’s hearts, the song in the prompt’s title never got out of my head. I hoped this exercise would excise it.

I started thinking about humans and change. How many people hate it (I am usually in that camp, at least about certain things), and yet, the drive for novelty has tickled many a social theorist’s fancy—and advertising campaigner's heart—because that drive is such an interesting concept with broad consequences. I believe Habermas talked about it, as did my own personal favorite theorist, Georg Simmel.

Mixed into these musings—about the love-hate relationship I think most folks have with change—is something I read while researching my senior project on birds (well, it’s actually about providing bird habitats in our urban world). The idea was that some research points to crows' ability to thrive in our human-enclaves as being due to their love of novelty. Makes them more curious and open to learning and adapting. Novelty = evolution? (Maybe if I ever get back to last week’s prompt I can exploit that idea.)

The poem above doesn’t get to the heart of crows, but it does attempt to paint a picture of the duality of human nature: hating change but embracing novelty. Don’t know if it works or not. As always, I welcome your comments.

Be sure to read the other prompts at PT, see the comments here to find the folks who posted something on their blog this week. Perhaps it has something to do with change, perhaps not. But you will find some intriguing poetry. There's something for everyone.