PAD Challenge Bonus: A Golden Shovel for Big Bird

 Here's a "bonus" poem I wrote earlier this month. It wasn't in response to either of the prompts that I usually follow daily, but to one I saw in the New York Times, who invited readers to write a "golden shovel" poem and submit it to them for possible publication. A "golden shovel" is an invention of poet Terrance Hayes, based on Gwendolyn Brooks' famous short poem "We Real Cool":

We Real Cool

by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.
        Seven at the Golden Shovel.

            We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late. We

            Strike straight. We

            Sing sin. We   

            Thin gin. We

            Jazz June. We   

            Die soon.

    Hayes took each word from Brooks' poem and used them as the end words of each line of a new poem (actually a two-part poem - he repeated the process for the second part.) He called the poem (and the creation) "Golden Shovel," after the subtitle of the poem. It caught on as a new form, and here we are. (You can read it here.) A "golden shovel" doesn't have to use every word of a poem, especially if it's not a short one - a line or two will do. And acknowledgement of the original source is expected, of course. Instead of a poem, the Times invited readers to write a golden shovel based on one of their recent headlines. I didn't submit this to their contest, but I had some fun with it, so I'm sharing it here.

Up on the Met Roof, an Artist Is Taking Big Bird to New Heights
-New York Times Online, April 2, 2021
 
Look up,
look way, way up on
top of the building, to find the
yellow hero, feathered, whom you've met
a hundred times on TV. His huge roof-
top nest could fit your couch. He's an
icon, an eight-foot friend, artist
of kindness, with a BFF who is
a kind of mastodon. We're taking
pictures of him as he looks down with his big
beaky smile, this overgrown canary, this bird
on a wire, keeping us warm and fuzzy enough to
think it will all be okay, that tomorrow is a new
day, that anyone can fly to their ultimate heights.