I’m using daily prompts associated with Inktober (artists doing ink drawings) to spur poetry this month. The poems flow from the prompts, though it may not be obvious (at all); and sometimes the poems are revisions of earlier poems that came to mind when I mulled the prompt. If there’s a photo in the post, it was chosen after the poem was written. I’m “showing my work” by offering some of the words, phrases, associations that came to me for each prompt. The poems may or may not have anything to do with gardens, gardening, or “nature” as it’s commonly considered. To see all the poems (once they’re written), check the Inktober landing page.

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Today’s prompt: TREASURE

Some associations: prize, value, fortune, hoard, pearl of great price, store, nest egg, treasure trove, treasure chest, Treasure Island, buried treasure, hidden treasure, one’s person’s trash is another’s treasure, precious, national treasure, king’s ransom, treasure hunt, stash, Aladdin’s cave, pot of gold, Treasure of Sierra Madre, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”

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Poem:

Self-Soothing

When I was little, my bed was my boat,
afloat among dangers with a cargo of treasures,
those animals imbued with life by me,
purple crayons, and books, whatever it took
to tide me over until rescue arrived,
safe as houses, in fact, the hazards contrived
to bolster a sense of snug and relief,
like a drug to duck disquiet, grief,
an illusion to scramble vulnerability, lack —
pretending, playing, rehearsing attack.

And still, metaphoric, I bob in rough seas
of the world-ending titanic variety,
by bounding lightly from rock to root,
from root to rock, leaping undocked,
dread pursuer behind, whole horizon ahead —
or it would be if I weren’t disporting with trees —
still unanchored, uprooted; harbour no guarantee.

©MMWms 2019

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