PAD Day 16: House Cleaner's Soundtrack

 Today's prompts from Writer's Digest and NaPoWriMo: (Write a "something fantastic" poem, and write a poem that "invites us to imagine music in the context of a place, but more along the lines of a soundtrack laid on top of the location, rather than just natural sounds. Today, try writing a poem that similarly imposes a particular song on a place. Describe the interaction between the place and the music using references to a plant and, if possible, incorporate a quotation – bonus points for using a piece of everyday, overheard language."

I used Vivaldi's "Spring" Concerto from The Four Seasons as inspiration today, and imagined myself cleaning to that sprightly piece of music. The poem is one of those "wannabe sonnets" that I almost unconsciously tend to write. There's no end rhyme to this one, but I found that with a few changes in line breaks I could get it down to fourteen lines, and it's not far from iambic pentameter, with an extra syllable or two here and there. But I'd rather leave it as is, at least for now, rather than over-tweak it. (Side note: I just learned that there was a set of sonnets written to accompany the four concerti. Their author is unknown but it could have been Vivaldi himself.)  As far as the "fantastic" theme - well, you could say imagining a vacuum cleaner as a cello and shepherds inviting me to clean the kitchen lend a sort of fantasy element to the poem.

Spring Cleaning to Vivaldi
 
“Alexa, play me some spring!” The morning
starts Allegro—I celebrate the birds
with a feather duster, dancing over shelves.
I flick arpeggios, gloss the tabletops
with a misty spray. Violins spur me
into a gentle whirlwind; the vacuum cleaner,
my mobile cello. I take a breath at
the Largo. The cherry tree outside my window
is bursting. Back to Allegro—shepherds' pipes
invite me to cavort in the kitchen,
wiping counters with a cloth soft as wool.
Everything wants to come into my house
this morning—sun, breeze, honeysuckle scent—
Throw open the windows! Open them all!