The prompt for Day 5 was to begin by reading Charles Simic’s poem “The Melon.” It would be easy to call the poem dark, but as they say, if you didn’t have darkness, you wouldn’t know what light is. Or vice versa. The poem illuminates the juxtaposition between grief and joy, sorrow and reprieve.

For today’s challenge, I was to write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.

So here you go….

Starlings 

In the garden sits 
my favorite blue chair—
where I bask 
in the sun
bathing 
my bones

cradling 
cold
grief.

The silence startled
with a sudden cacophony—
of starlings 
laughing
from the leaves.

Clarity came on 
hard and fast
as I turned
toward the sun,
closed my eyes 
and smiled.

—Carla Jeanne