Tuesday, June 15, 2010

A Poem for the Bog

Greetings fellow crazy Camosun bloggers!

The following is a short piece I composed for my creative writing course. We were asked to compose a poem on a moment in nature. I chose to write mine about the precariously leaning tree that had been damaged by the big storm we had earlier this spring.


Log

Acrobatic droplets slice like liquid silver razor blades.

Wind whips from the west, wet and wild off the water.

Gravity is a suckling leech, resistance ferments in its belly.

Weather is a pitbull: teeth gnashing, tether snapped.


Trunk exhales like a bullfrog being flattened under workboots.

Lacking leaves, this living log leans and lists lower.

Bark is corrugated cardboard, clapboard for a slovenly hovel.

Pestilence the only resident: a squatting vandal.


Taut roots snap with a pungent puff of rancid apples.

A dank drape of detritus and decay: the dark, dense dirt.

Roots are worms, living carcasses embedded in the soil.

Robins pluck them one by one with a rusty pair of chopsticks.


The workman's hands are smooth as encrusted barnacles.

His choking chainsaw chews: chipping, chopping, chiseling.

Metallic teeth hyaenas snorting and chortling about their kill.

But they forfeit their slaughter, a feast for scavenging locals.