Centigrade

It's day 20 of the Tupelo Press 30/30 challenge wherein several slightly insane poets like me try to write 30 poems in 30 days. Today's NY Times word of the day is centigrade, which couldn't probably be a less traditionally poetic word, which means I love and embrace it as a challenge. The definition itself has some great ideas in it from which I will happily steal.

centigrade

it's all about water 

the 100 steps 

it takes to freeze

or evaporate

100 hues of red

blood to fire engine

crust you follow too closely

eggshell you didn't count on

water is blue

when it freezes to tightly

the closest end of zero

where I fell for you

the dialect of a name

when I almost forgot

how to count the stairs (up and down)

by holding on too tightly

vermillion and blue

the 100 sounds the wind makes

when it bends things

birth again and again and once again

it doesn't have to be 

a love poem

and usually 

its not even close

but we are moving

like water through

the 100 steps up

and 100 steps back down again