This is the Song – Day 21

This is the Song

This is a song for a sunny day
This is a song for greeting
There is another song for fare-welling
This is a song for many countries
This is a song for the ocean
This is a song for the sky
This is a song for my home and my land
This is a song for the birds that sing
This is a song for the cataract gone
not just from one eye, but both eyes now
This is a song for the music I see
This is the song for a good cup of tea
This is a song and I love to sing

Benita H. Kape (c) 22.4.2021

Notes:

And now for our (optional) prompt. Have you ever heard or read the nursery rhyme, “There was a man of double deed?” It’s quite creepy! A lot of its effectiveness can be traced back to how, after the first couplet, the lines all begin with the same two phrases (either “When the . . .” or “Twas like,”). The way that these phrases resolve gets more and more bizarre over the course of the poem, giving it a headlong, inevitable feeling.
Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like this one, uses lines that have a repetitive set-up. Here’s an example I came up with after seeing this video of . . . a bucket of owls.
Bucket List
Several owls can fill a bucket.
Several buckets can fill a wheelbarrow.
Several wheelbarrows can fill a truckbed.
Several truckbeds can fill a song.
Several songs can fill a head.
Several heads can fill a bucket.
Several buckets filled with heads and owls
Sing plaintive verse all night long.

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Black Heron

To Remind Me of Something and Everything                                    (Inspiration from a video by Paul Wheatley)

Black Heron, Lake Kotu, Gambia

ingenious, those feathers, layered:

lifting and spreading as a closed

circle circle circle

covering completely

your bird body head to toe.

You disappear and we are left

with an umbrella; a black umbrella

held up by a beak and two legs

with your bright yellow claws

stepping a ballet

of claws and feather spread.

 

Telescoping, a tuft of feathers,

at your head, a half layer,

further indicating your unusual beauty

and your trajectory

as you move around the shallows.

 

Some say you are your own sunshade,

a canopy as you capture a meal;

a camouflage that captivates us.

 

No umbrella I open would ever be

as beautiful though I might paint

handles a bright yellow

to remind me of you.

 

Benita H. Kape (c) 12.3.2020

 

OPEN WINDOW – GloPoWriMo Day One – poem after Kay Ryan

OPEN  WINDOW    (Day One NaPoWriMo 2017)

The window

was left open

overnight

A bird flew in.

By morning

the chill

had long

escaped.

The bird

was sitting

in another room.

I let him fly.

I am

the one

singing.

Benita H. Kape © 1.4.2017

 

 And finally, our (optional) prompt. In honor of today’s interviewee, I’d like to challenge you to write a Kay-Ryan-esque poem: short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, maybe an animal or two, and, if you can manage to stuff it in, a sharp little philosophical conclusion.

Viva la Poets: NaPoWriMo, 2016 – Day 7 – Tritina

Viva la Poets, One & Many Tritina Song

Will this be my tritina song?
No reason it should not work.
Rhythm & rhyme, song in good voice.

The melody, the thought, the chord, the voice,
By the end of the day, a poem a song.
A practice, a praise to all poets’ work.

In the new world, the old world, they work,
Geography and accent, a planets’ voice.
Elation as one, then all, join with the poets in song.

Man as beast work, birds sing, small voice in song.

Benita H. Kape © 7.4.2016

Our (optional) prompt for Day Seven comes to us from Gloria Gonsalves, who challenges us all to write a tritina. The tritina is a shorter cousin to the sestina, involving three, three-line stanzas, and a final concluding line. Three “end words” are used to conclude the lines of each stanza, in a set pattern of ABC, CAB, BCA, and all three end words appear together in the final line.

p.s. “late” but sometimes I want to cry when it happens. love to all my fellow poets.