PAD Day 26—Fur, Fowl and Animal Poems

 

Today’s poem challenge is to write about an animal, addressing any aspect desired. Okay, I can do that. Like most people I’m fond of animals. They serve so many purposes within our lives that to have a world devoid of them seems sacrilegious.

 

Growing up in the country guaranteed that I knew and appreciated the roles of animals in our daily lives. So many years later, I still consider them the gifts of the earth, put on loan to us; teachers to teach us how to be guardians. You can decide for yourselves if we’ve ever learned the lessons.

 

Some creatures inhabit our dwellings as friends and family members. Others enrich our lives with their colors, textures, uniqueness, and myriad dimensions. The poems I’ve done today for this challenge are from both sides of the animal question; in house and outside it.

 

As always, I hope you enjoy these small efforts of mine. Take the time to comment; share some of your animal tales with others, if you wish. Above all, take a good look at what your life would be like without the non-human inhabitants in your life.

 

Companion Truth

 

Brandy orbs trusting, I see

 

Filled with love looking at me,

 

Gentle power of loyalty

 

Ever near, ever dear sentry.

 

Raise the call with nose held high

 

Licker of feet for miles gone by,

 

Pass this way my care to enjoy

 

Walk at heel my life an envoy.

 

© Claudette J. Young 2012

 

 

 

Vixen’s Siren

 

Screams fill the night,

 

Terrorizing the listener.

 

Finger hovers over 911,

 

Until reason asserts truth.

 

It’s spring;

 

Her annual mating ritual begins

 

With blood-chilling siren song,

 

Seeking company for the nonce,

 

The vixen readies to entertain.

 

© Claudette Young 2012

 

Related articles

• PAD Day 23 Prompt: Write a morning poem (claudsy.wordpress.com)
• Poem in Your Pocket Day (poetrypatio.wordpress.com)
• Bunny Licker Is One Adorable Animal Video (neatorama.com)

Whether Love or Not

 

Writers are strange creatures. We wander around our world, a love and hate relationship with that thing we do called writing. Beneath all the setbacks, the frustrations, and the seemingly endless revisions, we cannot quit being writers.

Dream leads to storylines. Storylines pulse through us until we cannot stand the beat any longer and we must DO something with them. It doesn’t matter if we believe they’re good, fully functioning ideas with potential for greatness. What matters is that we thought of them, felt a sharp pricking sensation when they flashed through our minds, and they whispered to us.

This relationship we have with our writing fluctuates with the events and daily routines of our other lives; our lives outside of sitting at the keyboard and communing with the inside of our heads and the movies playing there. It flutters as butterfly wings on the verge of take-off; delicate in form and newness, steel-strong in carrying power. It surges as tides of vibrant, sometimes stereophonic, images that wash over the outward reality of the moment, escorting us to places beyond, among those who don’t frequent our neighborhood.

Dramas vie with sweet romance, which oft-times takes a detour through the war zones of our world to pause amid the childlike wonder created by harpies that fill the skies with black ragged wings and voices ready to pierce metal armor, while children stand ready to protect the innocent from harm.

Along the way, laughter bursts forth from words penned by housewives who profess a lack of understanding as to why the world operates as it does, who keep asking for logic, knowing that human machinations has little of that commodity. Music may soothe the savage breast, but words linger within our spirits, to uplift or depress according to their emotional impact. That is the power of what we do.

Uneasiness with influence and power may hold us static for a time. Fear may prevent us from exhibiting our writing wares as often as we’d dreamed, but it cannot prevent our words from finding release. Like life, writers will always find a way.

Photographers know the plight of the writer. Seeing an incredible sunset and not having a camera in hand, is worse than having a fantastic idea for a story or article—far worse. The photographer can only stand and admire the gift of God’s colors and design while it lasts. When twilight rules, it is gone forever. It cannot be recreated as it was. The writer carries her camera of ideas within her head. Recreating them, while not always simple, is doable.

Musicians straddle that fence of creativity between photographers and writers. They paint their images with musical notes. Like writers there is no physical image involved. The musician’s frustrations are like the writers’ when notes won’t come together as conceived or when concern erupts that patterns of notes are as another composer’s previous music. That concern reflects on a writer’s work as well.

Creative design work, regardless of type, generates that love/hate dynamic within the artist. An artist is what a person is, not what she chooses to be. Non-artists can do the work. That’s true. Non-artists can also put it away and never touch it again.

Artists can’t.

Regardless of how deep the chasm between our love of what do and our dissatisfaction with it, we keep returning to the keyboard, the pad of paper, the piano or guitar, the camera or the carving tools. Painters, in water or oil, acrylics or pastels, must find release.

There is no craving for us. There is only a need to release what is fomenting inside us, within our minds. To deny that surge of creative energy is to deny ourselves.

Winding Down Only to Gear Up

 

February’s blog challenge has come to an end here at the last hour. Tomorrow, March issues its own challenge. The prompt for March is “Whether.” This looks to be a marvelous opportunity to try all sorts of new topics.

Whether I take to this challenge as eagerly as the last, I intend to give it my best shot. I plan to make this a writer’s month of technique aspects, personal challenges, and thoughts on what other writers have to say about the business and the markets.

I encourage everyone who has been kind enough to stop by Claudsy’s Blog this month to continue to drop in to see what’s on the conversational board during March. Come in and give your two cents’ worth.

Until then, a bientot,

Claudsy