Day 9 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt 

Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.

And so,

Against the Grain

In growling complaint, against the grain
my well honed plane 
chatters and shudders in my hands
as if it understands
I am employing it in vain. 

Nonetheless we do our best
and push through the defiant strain.

Working in tandem, my plane and I,
the zippered whir as shavings fly
going with the grain, it will soon rain
fragrant strips and curls of wood.

Once fallen, on the floor they lie
like spent streamers at the curb
after the parade passes by.