Day 4 of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo dawned shortly past 7am. And I was awake! I am not a morning lark by nature. It wasn’t as if I went to sleep particularly early either. (Although I am a bit tired from March’s Mad Haring around from event to workshop to event to workshop to evening committment.) But the prospect of a fresh poetry prompt has me itching to get at it. Although I did need two massive cups of lemon tea to fuel the creativity.
Today’s prompt is about fleshing out an abstract. The idea (should you detect it) is one that I mull over often given where I live here in West Cavan. Dogs make a cameo appearance. So I tick that box.
Our craft resource today focuses on the use of concrete nouns and specific details, using the idea of “putting a dog in it.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too! For example, you could have a poem about sadness that describes that emotion as “a rowboat tethered with fishing line to a willow that leans over a pond. Rainwater collects in the bottom, and mosquito eggs.” Concrete details like those can draw the reader in and let them imagine the real world where your abstract ideal or feeling happens.
The Cat Who Came in from the Cold
In the country we live
In parallel, if not side by side
With the badger RTA on the verge
The fox corpse draped over a fence post
A caution against stealing lambs
Same as the pine martin nailed
On the Hen House door
Life with teeth, claws, other priorities
They have theirs. We have ours
And it’s fine most of the time
In the country we live
Sometimes with boundaries blurred
The feral cat, tick ridden mangey coat
Stilty legged, more bone than skin
After eighteen months
Reconnaissance and indecision
Came in from the cold
Who learned not to claw the hand
That fed and wanted to pet him
To play nicely with the dogs
Had manners put on him by the other cats
And sure there were some scuffles and squabbles
But what family hasn’t those?
In the country cottage where we live
He swapped one stress for another kind
Learning the customs of our dark continent
All for a stable food supply, warmth and vet’s visits
He will always be a bit of a foreign import
Slightly other, with his swagger and quick glare
Whiff of leaf mould, bonfire and barn mouse hunt
Closer kin to the badger and fox
Or even the model for the stuffed red squirrel
In his basket
That he savages
Before falling into his dreams and sleep
© 2018 Bee Smith
A daily source of delight Bee
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Felix is a perennial source of global delight. Rather to his chagrin.
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