The night before I set myself the prompt of dactylic meter (after reading wiki random post of epic poetry). I combined it with the prompt from Pádraig Ó Tuama at The Poetry Unbound Substack of night, animal, and rain. [In case you read that and thought, that seems not right, it is because it isn’t. It was the prompt of Roger Robinson.]
Rain on a Wintery Night
Heart is awake. In the ears, an adrenaline thunder of blood. Are there sounds? Through the darkness, an animal movement. What’s larger than
mice? In my trumpeting trembling ears —
There’a a shifting on springs—across my legs. And the back of him bunts at my shoulder
to move me aside, to make room. It’s too cold on the floor. Can you manifest love
as a shared heat? An inflatable threat just as quickly deflates. From Darth Vader
with candy cane to a shadow. Out on the lawn… there is nothing the matter. Secure as blankets,
as sheets. Aren’t curtains just sheets that can stand? Just as joists are just beams that can nap? Back to dog…
He is a peace and a whole. As he presses, as he grumbles, his sleep becomes snor-ious.
Happier than clams, he is wagging and yips in falsetto of play. I should settle too. Wisdom is clear at this hour,
But the path to return to that slumber? I listen to the breath of the pup.
And his twitching of chases. Some drowsiness can’t escape me this time.
All his visions of meadows, the deer under sumac, a heat that can be dappled away.
Can you hear it too? Gurgle of eavestrough or river. The sun has a tinkle like wind chimes, that call like the Fae.
It’s hardly the stuff of heroic epics but…Phew, that meter is hard. It forces to towards the words and structures I generally back away from in the name of efficiency and intensity: towards prepositional phrases, no contractions for helper verbs, gerunds, “and”, “just”.
I really have pushed lately towards iambic or so much spondees. Still, I prefer the pulse of iambic. It’s unstable, like a triplet somehow. Charming somehow though and not what I would normally write.