The Stafford Challenge, Day Three

Today I post the third of my poems in The Stafford Challenge. This project encourages poets around the world to write a poem every day for a year, inspired by the wonderful poet William Stafford who wrote a poem every day throughout his career. My third Stafford Challenge poem is also a sonnet (like the last two days), but to be more specific, a hay(na)ku sonnet. The hay(na)ku is a word-counting poem: one word in line 1, two words in line 2, and three words in line 3. This poetic form was invented by the poet Eileen Tabios in 2003. Since that time, other variants have surfaced such as the reverse hay(na)ku: 3-2-1. My variant, the hay(na)ku sonnet, is made up 4 hay(na)ku stanzas, followed by a couplet made up of a squished hay(na)ku (3 words per line) in order to end up with 14 lines, the typical length of a sonnet. I didn't rhyme my first hay(na)ku sonnets, but then the poet Bruce Niedt figured out that one could rhyme the ending words of each hay(na)ku stanza as well as the endings of the couplet lines. Bruce's typical rhyme scheme was xxa xxa xxb xxb cc. In today's poem, I've alternated the rhymes at the ends of the opening hay(na)ku, so abab instead of aabb. My topic today is music. I'm the bass player of the band Deja Blue. I've played bass for about 40 years and played guitar for over 60 years. I was inspired to write a music poem today by the poet Bethany Lee who posted recently in the Stafford Challenge facebook page that she is a musician and would be writing some music-related poems this year in the challenge. Thanks for the inspiration, Bethany! Playing Bass Fingers dancing on stainless steel strings fashion a skeleton for each song: armature, inner framework, outer contrabass wings, something underlying everything, right or wrong. Yup, everyone follows the bleeping bass. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by Renee Lukehart Wilkie Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ