Apologies in Advance of Poetry

I teach science, not poems. Vocal media challenged

to verse about comforts within a forty day deadline.

This be hard. I enter with reluctance.

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The only comfort I can find is in the memory

before I awoke--not on a magic school bus--screaming

to a post-pandemic world emptied into a classroom.

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For forty-ish days and forty-ish nights I will submit

to this poetry contest. There's no comfort in grieving.

The first is for a teacher of English: Your words saved me.

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Poems aren't my thing, but here's an odyssey of a dream.

I'll write in ballad. Google says it counts as poetry. 

You love this stuff, but I know not the hell of what I'm doing.

*****

When I resigned from the classroom after the pandemic

an icy finger of despair pulled me into the bed

and for three full days pointed through wandering, haunted dreams

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On Shenandoah soil I stood where water carved ravines. 

In every dream two looming oaks step apart; awaiting. 

Clear water no longer falls from a hole shaped like a key.

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Blood rust runs red and fire consumes the small and weaker trees. 

Autumn's mold has taken hold rotting roots from deep within. 

The stench tells me there's danger near. Disease is in the stream.

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And in these dreams this disease is calling for my own name. 

It's coming for my progeny, claiming our DNA. 

It's here; even outside of sleep. It needs someone to blame.

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So how am I doing with the imagery? Spark Notes 

told me to use all similes and metaphors and quotes 

around the words of someone else. This poetry's no joke.

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I don't know how you read this stuff. You do. So poetry 

I will write because I heard you. Your words are what saved me. You

hollered from a mountain top. You echoed in my dreams.

****

The strangest dream happened night three when silence I did cross 

a foggy Appalachian road where vines and mold and moss 

sang of hanging ghosts in trees with no sound, no words, or thought.

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The birds herald with no chirping, stationed silent and still. 

Perched upon every tree branch, they watched with intense will 

as the ground quaked; I looked about a shattered cathedral.

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My feet planted on both sides of the deepest cut ravine. 

Standing over a gaping hole that widens and I screamed. 

No sound or move the birds did make as if it's what they deemed.

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Into a mountain's deep chasm I slid. Clawing to grasp 

at cavern walls too smooth to hold. The vines of Eden's grapes 

make them partially unclothed. I slip into a cenote

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and float in rich and velvet folds of water emerald green. 

My lips lap at holy water, arms stretched wide to receive 

a beam from above, lighting up droplets like confetti.

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That was my attempt to play with religious imagery. 

The internet says its needed To write good poetry. 

Only don't expect that from me; I only teach science.

***

This next part gets pretty crazy. I'm pulled under by snakes. 

153 feet down into a glistening cave. 

Flesh colored rocks untouched by age, nothing weathered away.

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Behind ridged walls there comes a pulse, a deep, low sultry beat. 

They push me onto couches, soft, jewel-toned and velvety. 

Show me yours and I'll show you mine and the snakes undress me.

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They are not terrifying when they expose their own skin; 

they are quite beautiful, really. They slither and slide in. 

Curvaceous, supple, voracious iridescent passion.

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Is this Eden's Garden? I asked. They laughed. Shook their heads no. 

When will I come back? I plead. 'When the time's right. You'll know'. 

But what if I don't know the way? They shrugged. 'You're on your own'.

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They wove a crown of feathers in my hair. Spoke history 

in my ear. And from fleshy folds presented me a key. 

They pointed to a gate and said, 'You'll be back to see me'.

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The other side of the gate was the Appalachian road. 

Ghosts of birds watched silently from trees like skeletal bones. 

Beneath my feet the disease had grown; I dove back in the hole

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and crashed onto concrete ice. The water froze. Bedsheet white 

cliffs replace smooth caves. No more snakes. The cenote had dried. 

The disease made it insurmountable. I lost the will to try.

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It was your words that helped me out, whispering through the night. 

A poem you once read, 'Rage, Rage,' but your voice wasn't right. 

It was the scream of trees and birds 'Do not go gentle'. Fight.

***

Why does poetry always have to be so confusing? 

It can't just give the answers or reveal the true meaning. 

I'm only a science teacher. I don't know what I'm doing.

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But you love the stuff, so I'll write this dream-like Odyssey 

as a poem (I hate poetry) because your words saved me. 

You hollered from a mountain top. I heard you in my dreams.

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I once took a poetry class. I wasn't very good. 

The teacher liked his writing and his buckle made of wood. 

He'd set us before him and read shit no one understood.

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So I used a lot of symbols and most of my own words 

I tried personification. I've done all my homework. 

But leave it up to poetry to not make any sense.

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