Sunday, April 22, 2018

PAD Day 22: I Spend Earth Day Weeding

Yes, I did, and today's poem was inspired by that. Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo; (1) write a poem about a plant and make it the title of the poem, and 
(2) (once again, in Maureen Thorson's words):
...take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
The sun can’t rise in the west.
A circle can’t have corners.
Pigs can’t fly.
The clock can’t strike thirteen.
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.
Before the Poetic Asides prompt went up for today, I tried to write just to the NaPoWriMo prompt, but got something strange and depressing that I decided not to post, at least not today. Instead, I took both prompts and wrote another one, a lighter, rather silly verse about a certain plant, and incorporated Maureen's "impossible" images as a series of "what-ifs", so to speak, as in "if pigs could fly", etc. So here we go:
Dandelions

No matter how many times I'm mowing,
the dandelions just keep on growing.
No matter how many times I weed,
dandelions find a way to re-seed.
If the sun one morning rose in the west,
dandelions would greet it, each sun-faced pest.
If the stars decided to shuffle the night,
dandelions would still stand upright.
If an elephant were eaten by a mouse,
dandelions would still surround my house.
If the clocks one day all struck thirteen,
dandelions would still keep their green.
If all the circles were suddenly square,
dandelions wouldn't seem to care.
If pigs all decided that they could fly,
dandelions would look up and wave "hi".
With all my raking, pulling, hoeing,
dandelions - damn them! - keep on growing.
If the apocalypse came and destruction swirled,
roaches and dandelions would rule the world.


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