A Poem a Day (658): NaPoWriMo Day 27 - To the bone

 
Day 27 
 
Prompt: write an American sonnet. What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter. Here are a few examples:
·        Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnet (10)
·        Terence Hayes’s American Sonnet for the New Year
·        Ted Berrigan’s Sonnet LXXXVIII

www.napowrimo.net

 
 
To the bone

We’re all on the low road,          the way of the wanderer,
    the seeker,         deliberately taking the longest route,
            the other,          the in between,             the indifferent.

It’s a rite of passage        without the right to flow,
                        seeking that old missing thing       that has no name
                                            or identity        because it hasn’t been given one.

        We are our own guide, the lone skin.      Dry Ark.

                        Mine is the sun that scurries down from hunger.
        We are the walking, the unsettled,           the unfound.

                ‘Are you going my way?’ is the question you want to ask,
        but the only encounter you have is four-pawed.

                    An Alsation with a ratty beard,        his own story to tell,
        for he has journeyed further         and harder in his seven years.

            It’s something to chew on.          Like a dog with a bone.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 27, 2024