List Poem Exercise

This was an exercise due in class for today. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I've been so busy that I decided to post it. We were supposed to use repetition effectively. I decided I liked to write about fall.


The leaves sleeping on the pine branches,
The leaves resting their ardent oranges and reds,
The leaves reaching their fingers to one another,
The leaves tumbling when the wind tickles them.

The breezes meandering through the thicket, like
A creek suspended by needles. The breezes picking up
The fire from the grass, joyfully, to celebrate the end
Of an epoch only captured by green. The breezes
Interlocking, changing course with
The breezes that never caress the ground.

This matted earth, partially wrangled from wear,
This matted earth, nearly soiled from the stale,
This matted earth, completely close to the past seasons.

What was August? Could anyone remember?
What was the heat like? Is the lawn still bleached?
What was of the solstice storm? What architecture was lost?

This deconstruction is natural. Time for us to observe
This deconstruction and acknowledge the skeletons
This deconstruction makes of everything. Forever,
This deconstruction will be prompt, it will be needed.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Early post? And BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! And a plug.

Why yes, this is an early post. It is because I am in the Amsterdam airport right now. I have a layover and do not board for another hour, so I decided to kill time like this. I was watching the clouds on the airplane and saw how they changed when we went through them. That gave inspiration to this poem, which is relatively long.

And the big announcement, as sort of promised/alluded to: I am relaunching The Digre Poem Project. For those of you who are not familiar with it, I wrote a ten-line poem a day for fifty days in the winter of 2007/ 2008. I had been inspired by photographer Ray Brandenburg's similar endeavor and did it myself. This project had a huge impact on my life and on my poetry, and I then proceeded to write and talk about it in every single college interview I attended. Now, three and a half years later, I want to do it again while studying in Norway. I'm starting it next Monday the 27th, so mark it on your calendars!

Finally, shameless plug: check out my other blog while I'm in Norway and Britain! www.fiskandchips.blogspot.com. I suggest you do, especially if you like mundane travel details and culinary accounts.

This is the most I've ever written in an entry.

FINALLY FINALLY, the poem.


Who envies a soul
Whose being shifts
So effortlessly? What blend
Of will and outer lifts
Create a cloud? In the end
Do they really have control?

They change their shape
Because they cannot
Control. Blame the wind,
Blame the whole lot;
Look at the landscape
And imagine it not pinned

By the breeze. Imagine it wild,
Bitter, full of anguish,
Freedom for freedom’s sake
Tossing its head in a wish
Of something crucial to take
From the wind. And not mild:

To reach for the position
The wind holds. The power
It exerts could be a cloud’s.
But to dissipate with a shower,
Or be influenced by the mission
Of the tornado crowds,

Cannot be in the heart of the gust.
Oh, it’s not your power to exert!
If only you clouds knew your place.
Oppression surely must hurt,
Rolling, clinging onto space,
But who else can we trust?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Cold Night

There is no one more
Important than me
For me. I learned this
From the cold kiss
The wind gave free.
How kindly I ignore

What I feel and think
And hold what I want
In disdain as if maybe
Only a similar gray be
The extent of my détente
‘Tween life and the sink

-Ing I call the rest of
The world. A cold night.
A perfect time for one
To hold a greater need to none.
To make my self-thought right,
And I myself can love.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Parables of the Wind: Part I

The scratching at my cheeks grows thick
And red summoned on their plain
Does little to protect the raw
That round my presence seems to stick,
Governed by some physics law,
Where the exposed will tend to stain.

The faster gusts, my paces quick,
Though in it I have naught to gain.
She pushes me with her guffaw
To whatever on me she can nick.
She snakes to find a mortal flaw,
She persists on me without refrain.

Oh, her free will has made me sick!
She makes cold rubble out of grain,
She turns the flora into straw,
She satirizes each new chick.
Yet just as the blackbirds need their caw,
From her purpose she won’t abstain.

In this existence did she pick
To plant in nature so much pain?
Did she request to have her jaw?
Yet she is subject to the flick
And scratch of a large, unseen claw.
She dissipates, but I remain.

Unpublished Material, © 2010 Cali Digre