New Summer Whispers to Old Winter

This week's readwritepoem prompt asked us to take two poems we weren't entirely happy with and have them "talk" to each other. I decided to take my "Dirty Snow Berms" poem and "Summer's Seduction" (both available in their original forms under the tag "Seasons" on the blog) and have them talk to each other. I'm not sure about the result, so I will be revisiting this one...

Only the evergreens
Can defy the cold
But summer’s seduction
Makes it easy to forget
While berms down below
Contain all the excess
Hear the breeze whisper
You are safe you are warm
Belched from our cars
And kicked up from our tires
No need to remember
The sting of biting ice
My feet are embedded
In a late winter scab
Come, walk tender feet
On warm carpets of grass
And if I pick at it
It only spreads more
The sky is your ceiling
No need for shelter
And encrusts my bad habits
In crunchy crystals
Walk unafraid
It’s time to forget
I’m too tired to climb
Over icy blockades
The cold will never again
Split your tired skin
Who is my neighbor?
Where is my river?
See waters tumble
And flowers dance.
Above me the sky
Is clueless with clouds
Let the warmth lift you
From east to west
But down here I hunch
And shuffle and slide

Readwriterevise!

This week's readwritepoem prompt is to revise one of the poems we wrote for napowrimo. I chose to revise my Guinevere poem. You can see the original here. I wound up not making as many changes as I thought I would, just a few tweaks here and there to the third and last stanzas. I'm happier with it now.

Her Sword
In the tower of the convent
In the tangle of her mind
Guinevere sighed and
Reached back in time
And wondered …
If Excalibur
Had been for her
What might have been?

If woman could part
Blade from stone
And take for hers
The sovereign crown
Would love still have
To sacrifice to law?

Could she thwart
Merlin’s prophecy
And set the fate
Of women free
From shouldering
The burden of the fall?

Could the kingdom
Ever belong to her at all?

If power and glory
Were hers to take
And the beginning
Of it, hers to make,
For the three of them
And Camelot’s sake,
Should she not
Hurl
That fabled sword
Into the lake?