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: CATCH

Some associations: caught, fish, net, Catch 22, a real catch, catch a cold, there’s a catch, catch at a bad time, catch in the act, catch you later, caught napping, caught red-handed, catch your breath, catch on the hop (surprise), catch off balance, catch as catch can (make do), catch your death, catch fire, catch more flies with honey than vinegar, catch sight of, catch some rays (tan), early bird catches the worm, catch a wave, catch a thief, you must lose a fly to catch a trout, catch of the day, catch a falling star, catchphrase, play catch up, Catcher in the Rye, what’s the catch?, fasten, hook, anchor, buckle, clip, latch, snag, drawback, arrest, capture, grab, seize, snare, trap, glove, lasso, a nab, detect, unmask, apprehend …

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Poem – in the terza rima form

Unhooking

That disorientation when things are so close,
something familiar re-forming, shaping befuddled,
sizes and patterns performing a subtle transpose.

You shake yourself, your head a shade fuddled,
a three-day bender has landed you here,
martinis or gimlets with cucumber muddled,

how else to explain to the casual sightseer
that what once was a whole is distorted, illusion,
the optical hijinks of an arch puppeteer

who plays in your brain, engineering allusion —
that kink when one thing reminds otherwise —
and now fungi made macro are a sluggy profusion,

elegant spiders a Queen Anne’s Lace surprise,
Asclepias buds pink dainty French bulldogs,
likewise roots turn decoys, a conjured duck guise.

You won’t find these descriptions in most catalogues —
fanciful though their copy’s reputed —
but use your eyes, unhook monologues,

and you’ll feel more than see that what’s constituted
reveals hidden traces, phenomenally transmuted.

© MMWms 2019

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A few of the many things that look like other things to me: