Prompt: Today we were challenged to write a poem that uses at least five of the following words. In my own rodomontadian fashion, I decided to use all of them. I italicized the words as they were used in the poem so you can check up on me!
Word List: owl generator abscond upwind squander clove miraculous dunderhead cyclops willowy mercurial seaweed gutter non-pareil artillery salt curl ego rodomontade elusive twice ghost cheese cowbird truffle svelte quahog bilious
Circadian Verse Non-pareil
Enough, I say! It’s bad enough when poetry stoops to puns
or limericks, but now we’re asked to write of guns????
NaPoWriMo!
Just say, “No!”
I, myself, would journey over dale and hillery
to avoid the usage of artillery!
There is enough of it in every news report
with vivid details: magnum, caliber or loudness of report.
It am so sick of it!!!
Guns don’t fit
in poetry and that is why
I choose to write about fine dining under a cowbird sky
on truffles svelte and mercurial with just a ghost of cheese
upon my plate—a dish that’s sure to please.
No salt, no clove, no quahog purloined from its oceanic lair
should be added to this perfect dish. What dunderhead would dare?
Overhead, an owl drops like a comet to abscond
with some small creature scooped up from the pond.
He flies away, upwind, then curls his flight to fly back over
and in one miraculous swoop, his talons comb the clover
in search of prey that is elusive
and wisely, seconds later, is reclusive.
Twice more, we see our willowy feathered friend descend
while our teeth keep chewing and our elbows bend
to stuff yet one more morsel into bodies slightly bilious,
turning a deaf ear to talk now supercilious.
Our whole gluttonous, cyclopean brood
(one eye on the owl, the other on our food)
is loath one morsel of this groaning board to squander
on predator now circling over us, then over yonder.
His wings held straight—no bend or flutter,
he soars down low and eyes the gutter.
The seaweed now he surveys—that generator
of frogs and tadpoles and perhaps a gator.
But, finding nothing this hungry day,
he dips one wing and flies away.
And so must I desert my task circadian,
Lest ego turns me rodomontadian.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
So clever. Now I have to look up “rodomontadian.”
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Now, you need to level with me about whether I have really ever been guilty of displaying rodomontadian tendencies!
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Again you amaze me. You make your point about not thinking about artillery (oh, and do I ever concur!) by swooping, owl like, here and there, capturing one subject after the other…beautiful rhyme and rhythm, great vocabulary! I’m not going to tell you I am not familiar with some of the words like Patti did. Funny (for me) you’d write so beautifully about the swoop of owl, because I just finished reading the most delightful true story, Wesley the Owl by O’Brien. I have a deep affinity toward owls going on within me right now, so I really was glad you gave such attention to your own owl. The average barn owl has to have 5-8 whole mice a day, and O’Brien had to kill them for her own. I won’t go into details, but she’s good with them, just as you are. Fascinating!
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In Boulder Creek, I was looking out the living room window one day and an owl came swooping down out of a redwood tree, flying fast––right toward the window. It felt like he came within inches of the glass, looking directly into my eyes. It was impossible that he didn’t hit the glass, but lifted right up over the roof and disappeared. It seemed like a different sort of reality––like a dream. Afterwards, I felt like I had imagined it and I knew it had a certain significance, but never did really figure out what it was. It was shortly before we went to Mexico and months before Bob died. Perhaps I was hearing it call his name instead of mine.
We have a hoot owl in the neighborhood and also a white owl I’ve seen once and a friend has seen three times.
My favorite words in the entire poem are “a cowbird sky.” It just came to me and I love the sound of it and can picture what it is to me but also love that the reader can figure out what it means to them. (Kin to a gibbous moon, I guess.) I love this means of relating to you. As I get older, art and writing are what seem to have the most importance to me. Working with Tony all these years on the book, then working with ten different friends who have read, edited and advised–especially Duckie, has made me value this kind of communication which yields an art that is a product of all who contributed. I guess this is the closest I’ll come to childbirth. All those birthing coaches!!!
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As always your writing leaves me in awe. As if my reading was left behind the barn.
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What a wonderful comment. Thanks so much. Love your turn of phrase in saying this. As if your reading was left behind the barn–Ha.
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I just made a post Night and Day. Thought I’d warn you not to read it, don’t want to make you sick.
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I have been getting brave. I changed my ‘Why I Wanna Be A Writer Blog’ to ‘My Mixed Blog’
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Good for you because if you are writing, you are a writer!!! Just let yourself take risks. Best advice a writer can accept!!
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Thanks. The day is coming when my world will be bed or chair, hope I can keep ducks, chips, marbles, etc. where they belong. “A mind is a terrible thing to loose,” Dan Quale I will have to write or get off the pot!
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