NaPoWriMo Day 3: Below sound

Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. At the moment I’m catching up as it’s day 4. So I have to post 3 today. 

Day 3’s prompt was a challenging one:

Make a list of 10 words. For each word, use Rhymezone to identify 2-4 similar-sounding or rhyming words. Once you’ve assembled your complete list, work on writing a poem using your new word bank. You don’t have to use every word, but try to play as much with sound as possible, repeating sounds and echoing back to others using your rhyming and similar words.

It was an interesting challenge because the words shaped where the poem went. It definitely took longer than usual and it was fun.  

These are my 10 words and 2-4 rhyming words:

Lizard – gizzard, buzzard, differed

House – mouse, spouse, rouse

Red – dead, fed, fled

Stone – blown, grown, bone, sown

Free – bee, glee, see

Walking – rocking, clocking, blocking

Feet – beat, heat, neat, sheet

Fox – box, rocks, socks, shocks

Stalk – chalk, balk

Man – span, plan,

I used all of my words to make this poem:

Below sound

Fully fed, the red fox fled the yard of the house,

Away from the dark man with hands tightly clenched,

Where the yellow, sown field withered in the heat,

Its crop almost delivered; it differed to him not.

Below, the gizzard of a lizard rippled at the sight

Of a swooping buzzard, turned in mid-flight,

Plunging from the sky to lunge at a mouse startled,

His plan revealed, wingspan blocking the light of the sun.

The man’s face set to stone, grew old and weary,

And the beat of his feet, without socks, did not balk

From the damp grass, rough soil or sharp rock.

Grounded, roots spread, he sank in towards the dead.

Long buried, they almost whispered back to him.

A bee buzzed its glee to see myriad flowers blown,

Grown by the man’s spouse, speared on their stalks.

The man had carried her tight-wrapped in a neat sheet,

Clocking it all, walking his mind away from each shock.

Bones in a box. Chalk marked her grave. Now free.

She lay sleeping, almost rocking in her bed six feet down.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 4, 2020