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.