Poem prompt: “Our featured resource for the day is the online gallery of the Rijksmuseum, where you may particularly enjoy their series on 100 masterpieces within the museum’ s collection. And here’s a little anecdote about how browsing an online collection of this kind can lead you to new and startling discoveries. While taking a peek at the museum’s exhibit regarding Meissen porcelain, I came across this slide show about a particular porcelain macaw, which in turn led me down the rabbit hole of learning about saxon elector and Polish king Augustus the Strong, who “died at the honorable age of sixty-two, his kingdom a financial ruin, with nine children from six different women, and a collection of thirty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight pieces of porcelain.” I feel much less sheepish about my comparatively modest trove of knick-knacks and doo-dads after reading that.

And with that silliness out of the way, today’s (optional) prompt is inspired by a poem that’s an old favorite of mine, by Kay Ryan.

Crustacean Island

There could be an island paradise
where crustaceans prevail.
Click, click, go the lobsters
with their china mitts and
articulated tails.
It would not be sad like whales
with their immense and patient sieving
and the sobering modesty
of their general way of living.
It would be an island blessed
with only cold-blooded residents
and no human angle.
It would echo with a thousand castanets
and no flamencos.

Ryan’s poem invites us to imagine the “music” of a place without people in it. So today, try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like “angle” and “flamenco”) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!”

A Woodland Choir

I close my eyes and lie on my side, 
sunken in fine fescue grass 
to let the sun-kin in my mind. 

I tune to the hurdy-gurdy of hurried cicadas. 
The bullfrog bassoon bleeds its reeds
against ker-plops of crawdads and catfish... 

the river is a mile away 
but She brings them 
on the wind of her breath

to hum a morning lull-alarm. I open 
my heart to the deer hoof drum, 
the otters' staccato skitters, 

rabbits breakdancing in their burrows,
raccoons waving hands to make rain,
mice wailing the world's smallest violins,

and if I strain just shy of suffer, 
my eardrums can match the beat 
of a distant griffon's wings.