Hello, friends! My poem today is #94 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #459, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “For today, try writing your own poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a ‘No ___’ poem.”
Once again, I am combining the prompts.
No More Dragons? No.
—curtal sonnet
Today’s prompt for a mythic animal
probably made you think that I would write
a ditty on the almighty dragon.
After all, I wear dragon apparel
daily! I composed one hundred and eight
dragon poems last year! Shall we dragon?
Or is it, drag on? I read a poem
today with the metaphor “dragon’s breath”
for war. So folks still need to know dragons,
at least in Asia, are wise, kind, esteemed.
“Dragon dragon dragon!”
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
By the way, the "one spoken phrase" required by the NaPoWriMo prompt was fulfilled by the last line of this poem, "Dragon dragon dragon," and this happens to be a quotation of the last line of my poem "Sestina: Dragon," which appeared in my most recent book Dragons & Rayguns and originally appeared in the blog during April 2014. Just a fun little detail.
Today, Alan is combining both prompts as well, but with several animals.
No Innocence
I have taken many lives, but none on purpose.
| 1. |
Hundreds, maybe thousands of insects before the depletion of the biomass, especially as I frequented interstates and rural two-lanes, especially during an early-season road trip back from Jacksonville so that as I drove through South Carolina, the worse of the Carolinas, I encountered a plague-like cloud of love bugs whose remains splattered the hood, grill, bumper, and windshield of the state car I was driving to the degree I felt concerned I would lose access to the motor fleet for the rest of my career, and
| | 2. |
Random birds, no more than ten, usually songbirds flying too low and colliding with me (again in cars) so that they caromed off the windshield, presumably dead from the impact, except the one undoubtedly dead and slightly integrated into the central grill of a 1972 Ford LTD, and then, a few years ago, a duck that just plopped down on the State of Franklin Road while Thomas Crofts, medievalist, was riding with me to get Mexican food, prompting him to say, “¡Chingada Madre!” a term we sometimes hear from language students in our department but never any Mexican folks we know, and
| | 3. |
No turtles, because they are too easy to miss, and a good guy will hit a turtle only by accident, and I have been spared, and
| | 4. |
No dogs, although I have been known on familiar streets to slow down so a particular dog can catch me, only to see how confused he gets afterward, but
| | 5. |
Sad to say, about ten assorted other small mammals, absolutely never on purpose, always the ones that dart heedlessly into the street, prompting me to swerve in what I afterwards attempt to persuade myself has been a successful maneuver to miss them, even if I hear a thump under the floorboard, and I swear never again to look in the rearview mirror immediately afterward, I swear.
|
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Amazing details again today, Alan. With regard to swerving (in this poem's section 5), remember William Stafford's warning and advice about roads and animals, “to swerve might make more dead,” from his poem “Traveling Through the Dark.” It's okay, maybe better, not to swerve. (Incidentally, friends, check out that Stafford poem . . . it's my favorite of all his poems.)
Thanks for coming by the blog today. See you again tomorrow?
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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