"For today's prompt, write a water poem. The poem could be specifically about water or just include water somewhere within the poem. You could even write about water-based phenomenon, such as rainbows or water spouts."For some reason water just wasn't flipping any switches in my brain. I waded back and forth through the familiar territory of the perils of too much water, too little water, water in the house-both wanted and unwanted-oceans, rivers, ponds and streams. I had nothing to 'say' about any of it. Underwater, overwater, through. . . been there, done that.
My mind stubbornly insisted on returning to one well worn theme. The Biblical Flood, the Deluge, all kinds of flood myths. It was there my muse dug in and insisted. So I took a part of a story, flipped it around a bit, approached from a new perspective, and I had my poem. It came out in free form couplets, I have no idea why. For whatever reason, it flowed.
Gushed? Surged? Streamed? Torrented?
Sorry. . . Anyhow, I fleshed out the poem enough to know where I was going, what I wanted to say, did a bit of research for details, and put it aside for a later edit. It's long, already 50 lines with a few sections still missing added facts. One of my goals was to write longer poems, since most of my work seems to self-truncate between 20 and 40 lines. Verbosity isn't a problem in my prose, so why the haiku-like sparsity of my poetry? Like everything else, the Challenge is a time to step outside the parameters of self-imposed boxes and try something new.
I tried a haiku afterward, and that poem insisted on unfolding itself a bit more than the normal syllable count. I went with it. Rough, but some potential.
So two days, five poems, and a muse who is eager to get to Day Three. Can't complain about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment