NaPoWriMo Day 6: The hare

Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. Today is day 6, and I picked the hare carrying a stick from Bosch’s painting. I can’t post it due to copyright reasons, but it’s a crazy, spooky painting.

This is the prompt for the April 6 poem:

Today’s prompt is to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famously bizarre triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive speared on its horn, a man using an owl as a pool toy, or a backgammon board being carried through a crowd by a fish wearing a tambourine on its head, I hope that you find the experience deliriously amusing. 

The hare

Buttoning up my jacket, black as nightshade,

I watch the innocent domino-drop in my stride,

Outnumbered in their fight against the horde.

Brown eyes wide, I spy every foolish trip by man,

My fluff of a tail concealed beneath my shroud.

Light long fled this place in a glass, sealed jar,

Myriad creatures twisted into eerie phantasms.

My bagpipes play an ode of madness to the fallen,

Jagged and crazed, a song for the pursued and lost.

The drummer boy sees me coming, carrying my stick

Of spikes, white dice mounted. Will his throw land lucky?

The odds are weighted hard against all of them, yet they

Play, and always fail, their flesh skewered forever.

Mermaids with missing tails circle for the entrails.

The sheer arrogance of man never ceases to amuse me.

Their vanity brags they can beat me, the lowly Hare,

Walking tall, my furry ears erect, an ode to cuteness.

Playing my pipes, I dare the storybooks to rewrite me.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 6, 2020