Bad Poetry: The View of the Tipping Point

This extra bit of Bad Poetry was prompted by the two simultaneous prompts at DVerse: https://dversepoets.com/2025/06/10/poetics-a-view-of-ones-own/ , in which Dora asked for poems that linked a view with a mood, and the ongoing call for submissions to the Krisis anthology at the top of the page. Reading other people's view/mood poems reminded me of a view that always reminded me of one long-ago summer of emotional crisis...

(image credit: Sally Garland)

That's not the view I was looking at; it's the closest color match Google pulled up.

The river flickers copper between green

I wrote. I wrote three poems that began

with that line, that year. Wasn't really keen

on any of them. Actually it had been

the branch creek, low banks bounded by cement

walls, mint and Queen Anne's Lace and sand

and damselflies like jewels in the sun.

How many sapphire blue, how many green

as emerald, how many black I'd seen

I tried to count, was always missing one.

Later I learned: the light's what did the trick.

As bodies turned in flight, the light would pick

out different colors. But they can look teal

or turquoise, some of that kind; none of ours.

Ours were true blue, true green, true black, no real

compromise among the extremes allowed.

I leaned on the rail and watched them bend the flowers

and walked up to my job, the only job

I'd ever wanted. Oh but I was proud

to be reshelving books, not going to school

although I missed school, too. I didn't feel

school friends were real friends; I just liked the crowd

that showed adults I'd learned some "social skills,"

whatever those were good for. If a mob

was what it took to get the perfect job

I'd run in one. Run one. Most kids were cool

and friendly, thinking of jobs, in high school.

"Nobody's getting paid to work this year,"

they said. "The budget cuts. But volunteer
work counts, for college purposes. You must

go on to college, now. With those test scores

it'd be a waste, a sin, a shame, a crime

not to go." For all three of my high school years

it had been "Go to Radford and then teach"
from teachers I ignored; from time to time

the preachers in the family would preach

"All young good-looking women should stay in

their homes as much as possible, and not

work where young men work, if they work at all,

for charity, and not occasion sin."

The library was the next most female zone

after the beauty shops I'd never been

inside. I went inside--the cool! the quiet!--

reached for the cart of books; a word; the plot

congealed: "We can't let you work any more.

Your parents and the boss locked horns last fall."

Now I'd nothing to go to college for

but "Everyone does something, or they'll rot."

I went. And it was all "You have to choose.

Where do you want to be in four more years?"

and all my mind's eye saw was that same scene:
the water flickered copper between green.