Thursday February 24th, 2022

The exercise:

Write about: clearing the air.

2 comments:

Greg said...

That seems appropriate after the previous prompt, and I hope that means that the office is safe to go back into :) Although if it isn't, I guess the next few prompts will seem rather angry.

I need to work out where I am with Fabian and update my Trello board to make sure I've not overlooked anything, so you're getting a poem today. I think it's been a while since I wrote one, so I hope you're not expecting too much. Actually, might be best to expect as little as possible, so as to minimise your disappointment :)

"Frost snake" was of course a joke. You need to look up 'polar snakes' :)

Clearing the air
The fumarole hisses like an angry snake;
Orpheus sits off to the side, his lyre
Discarded in the grass, his brain on fire
As words and images dance in his mind's eye.
He sees Hephaestus clad in leather,
Hammering iron on the anvil in the forge
Below the fumarole, at the bottom of a gorge
That fissures the land here.
Spit speckles his lips whitely,
Like spots on the back of the Cretan Bull
As he struggles to distill words from a mind full
Of feverish ideas swirling like oil-slicked water.
The fumarole vents less, and less, and less.
As the air clears about the poet
His minds clears also and before he knows it
The images are almost gone.
Orpheus gathers his lyre and strums a chord,
Bringing back the image of the smith,
And he combines music and lyrics with
The composure he only knows now.

Marc said...

Greg - an unexpected gift to see a longer poem from you. Had gotten overly used to the four line segments that arrive every Saturday :)

And I will look up no such god damned thing.

Brilliantly vivid imagery here. It feels like it's been an especially long time since your writing was inspired by Greek mythology. I've missed it, and absolutely enjoyed this return to it.