Day 30 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 104

Greetings, everyone for our last day in April! My poem today is #104 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #469, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a harvest poem.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: a “poem that discusses a real or mythical being or profession (demons, firefighters, demonic firefighters) with [a] musing yet dispassionate tone." Combining both prompts successfully for the last time. Thank goodness I was able to complete the whole month combining all the prompts. Philippine Flying Dragons             —curtal sonnet Draco volans — famous flying dragons of Mindanao soar from tree to tree like nine-inch-long miniature pterodactyls. Male dragon flies down to a tree trunk and waits there for a line of red ants, then strikes! Harvest of insects, a nearby anthill’s bounty. Female dragon descends to earth and excavates a hole with her head like a shovel, lays five eggs, and then tamps soil back in. For one whole day, this mom will guard.                                           Flying dragons rule! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo Source And here is Alan's last poem for the month, combining both prompts in an unusual fashion once more. Baby Potatoes I stand confused in the produce section by baby potatoes. They suggest that some people have a sense of inexhaustible plenty, that it makes some sense to consume the young, the tender, the underdeveloped to suit appetites of those who cannot appreciate how fulfilling the maturely developed can be, how what will be gone in one or two bites could with patient and nurturing stewardship fill a hungry belly and provide for the next planting instead of appealing to privileged preference who expects always to have access to a gulped taste that never sates it, grabbing for more. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] The notion of "harvest" is implied by the poem as a whole, and the tone achieves the dispassionate feeling suggested in the prompt. Thanks for coming by the blog all month, everyone. It's been fun poeming with Alan and, of course, with you. See you in April next year. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ