A Poem a Day (503): Film reel

NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
Day 5

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). I call this one “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain,” after this poem by Theodore Roethke, which I adored in high school – and can still recite!
This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example, the first line would start with “I,” the second line with “W,” and the third line with “A.” And I would try to make all my lines neither super-short nor overlong, but have about ten syllables. I would also have my poem take the form of four, seven-line stanzas. I have found this prompt particularly inspiring when I use a base poem that mixes long and short lines, or stanzas of different lengths. 
 
 
The foundation poem is Ariel by Sylvia Plath, from her Collected Poems. This poem follows the initial letters, structure, syllables and word count.
 

Film reel

Seeking lost pleasures,
teased out of our spent time,
pursed be our lips, speechless.
 
Go find greatness,
happy as we sow,
pining for its might! ­– This fortune
 
slows to a film reel, bends to
time’s slight touch,
of being and living in light.
 
Now stolen,
burial brings
honour –
 
books and dreams are
shimmerings.
Stolen ideas
 
hail from somewhere –
thoughts flown;
fluid walks a life.
 
Weary
gods, they listen –
dark karma will guide you.
 
A moment stops,
frozen, an empty course of water.
The still pause
 
makes all things melt.
And time,
a simple thread.
 
This is the new,
sewn into the sun-struck morning,
into the blue,
 
Everyman waking, reliving it all.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 7, 2022