NaPoWriMo PROMPT:  Today I challenge you to write a “golden shovel.” This form was invented by Terrance Hayes in his poem, The Golden Shovel. The last word of each line of Hayes’ poem is a word from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem We Real Cool. You can read Brooks’ poem by reading the last word of each line of Hayes’ poem! (In fact, you can do so twice, because Hayes, being ultra-ambitious, wrote a two-part golden shovel, repeating Brooks’ poem). Now, the golden shovel is a tricky form, but you can help keep it manageable by picking a short poem to shovel-ize. And there’s no need to double-up the poem you pick, like Hayes did. 

 

The Golden Moment

    After a poem by Terrance Hayes, “The Golden Shovel”

 

It was there in the meadow with jugglers and fire eaters that we

Met, sparking with the jingle of my coin wrapped hips not knowing real,

 

Not knowing if it was the flirt of a breeze, gone by evening’s cool,

Or did the yearning of our bodies pull us into we.

 

That place of union where hearts flutter open and we are left

Breathless, believing it might be more, it might be life’s school

 

Of passion giving us a spring break so we

Could escape the playground, the barkers and pranksters to lurk

 

Beneath willows, talking, teasing, yearning until the moon is late.

Even now with lips pressing warm, we

 

Do not know the future of lust but only the strike

The hard core need going straight

 

To our loins, spinning with desire and fear, we

Step back, caution whispering from the campfire sing

 

Where they will not judge us if we follow sin.

We link hands, join the others, shy now.  We

 

Separate, walk casually, feeling the thin

Link still dazzling like sunshine on gin.

 

Not tonight, she thinks.  Not tonight, he thinks. We

Is not yet born, in the jazz,

 

Of relationship where months may all seem like June

The arrival of summer, thin dresses and fast cars where we

 

Know we will not die

But grow from passion to compassion soon.

 

                C.J. Prince

                ©2014