NaPoWriMo Day 9: Leaving

 
Day 9 of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
 
Prompt:
Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.

 
 
Leaving
 
Leaves blow wild, verdant green,
sunshine yellow, burnt-out orange, in flame,
cascade and roll to sail serene,
then flip and dive, so hard to tame,
shuffled in the hands of the wind.
All-seeing, it will not try to blind or bind
their spirited adventure,
or the savage times they must endure.
Racing to beat me to the treeline,
they shake all that’s mine.
 
I am on my knees,
summoned by the playful fae,
and here I am what no one sees
beyond the greenness of my youth,
seeking the world’s own truth.
Hold nothing at bay
in this desire to grow wiser.
Time is the miser.
 
I fall upon the whims of the west wind, untested,
and trust it to carry me,
my true self so weightless, suspended,
to places I cannot yet see.
We’ll scale mountains, marvel, levitate,
surf seawaters, circumnavigate,
 
only to return when we tire of it all,
but we’ll never make that curtain call,
just keep on, keep on evolving,
iridescent in our ever-changing colouring,
 
a sacred switch to cue each season’s bliss,
never being anything less than this.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 9, 2025