Poem In Your Pocket Day NYC

is running a poetry competition based on the first lines of Emily Dickinson's poems.

This is my attempt.

I AM ALIVE....I GUESS

I am alive.....I guess.

Unless death feels like this.

Unless the breathing in and out

Is part of eternal bliss.

I am alive....I guess.

Unless non-life feels thus.

Unless the surge of blood through veins

Outlives the living 'us'.

I am alive.....I guess.

Unless my thinking brain

Is destined  for all eternity

To think time and again.

Should immortality

Hold this-ness in its store

How shall I know if I am dead?

Or living for ever more?

*

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MILKY MORNING

I call them Milky Mornings, when everything is still,

And the colour's bleached from everything we see.

When cream and grey predominate, and the air is chill,

And they merge together, clouds and sky and sea.

The atmosphere is gentle; the swimmers in the pool

Plough up and down with hardly any sound,

And the baths, which are so colourful and noisy as a rule,

When jolly people bustle all around,

Are peaceful and reflective with their ripples all subdued

And the dazzle banished with the hiding sun.

I love these mornings for they seem to mirror my own mood;

They're a breathing space before the day's begun.

*