Stroll

This January morning is frost-crisp,
wisps of cloud streak the sky,
my boots scrape and tinkle
gravel where the field rumples,
crumples like a fresh white cover
over storm-tossed limbs, frozen furrows,
hedgerows, overgrown and winter-scented.
Tormented by tingling fingers and toes,
nose numb and coat buttons come
undone, I greet the early magpie,
high in the trees, with veneration:
generations-old spell to bind the sorrow.

Kim M. Russell, 2018

Stroll 3

My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Fussy Little Forms: Chained Rhyme

Marian is our host this weekend and she has brought us another form challenge; we’re revisiting chained rhyme, a poem in which the last syllable or word of each line is followed by a rhyme on the first word or syllable of the next line.

Marian says it’s not really fussy or little because the poem can be anything you want–long lines or short, many lines or just a few, strict meter or no meter, whatever you like.

I have written a kind of found poem, in which I’ve played with words and phrases from a newspaper article and woven them into my own chained rhyme.

58 thoughts on “Stroll”

  6. Ah, Kim, well done! I love the mood this sets for me. Love this line: “I greet the early magpie,
    high in the trees, with veneration.” Love the whole feel of the thing and the rhymes help with that. I awoke to a new frosty morning after several weirdly warm days, so I guess I’ll be off to greet the birds. 🙂

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    1. Thank you, Marian! My husband went out earlier to refill the bird feeders with fatballs and we had a lovely 15 minutes or so watching a robin and a mistake thrush before a flock of different types of birds descended on the garden.

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  8. You’ve created a stroll that made me want to go along, but I do hope that there’s a blazing fire waiting to welcome us at the destination!

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  16. Well done with the form Kim.
    My hubs was a stickler for ‘Morning Mr. Magpie’ for it was well drummed into him that if he didn’t offer greetings, bad luck would surely follow.
    Anna :o]

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  25. Kim, this made me cold thinking about it. Here along the Texas Gulf Coast we are in for it early this morning and all day tomorrow. Blessed perhaps with a little snow or freezing rain on the next. Definitely not top down weather.
    ..

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