4.19.14 NaPoWriMo PROMPT: today’s (optional) prmpt. This is a bit silly, but it’s Saturday. I recently got a large illustrated guide to sea shells. There are some pretty wild names for sea shells. Today I challenge you to take a look at the list of actual sea shell names below, and to use one or more of them to write a poem. You poem doesn’t have to be about sea shells at all — just inspired by one or more of the names.
Peruvian Hat
Snout Otter Clam
Strawberry Top
Incised Moon
Sparse Dove
False Cup-and-Saucer
Leather Donax
Shuttlecock Volva
Striped Engina
Tricolor Niso
Triangular Nutmeg
Shoulderblade Sea Cat
Woody Canoebubble
Ghastly Miter
Heavy Bonnet
Tuberculate Emarginula
Lazarus Jewel Box
Unequal Bittersweet
Atlantic Turkey Wing
One never knows where a word will guide you. Join me.
Unequal Bittersweet Quest
You clam up when I yearn
for dialogue. What do we do
with this forbidden subject?
Is it just an American thing?
We are culturally unprepared?
We will all do it so why not
scamper along the options road.
Death. It is our end gift.
Do we want to go with earth
or fire? Our bone sacks
already sag. Where do they
want to be? Liberated
by fire so friends can take
chunks of bone and ashes to toss
over mountain tops and rivers?
Or settled sweetly beneath earth
where roots can bind
and earthworms rid us of the unnecessary?
Perhaps near a towering cedar
where ravens will sing my name in sunbreaks
and owls will remember me into the night.
It is part of the aging conundrum,
this resting place, the cave that tends
the final inert body.
Where shall we be, my Love?
Together always in spirit
even if one is earth and the other fire.
C.J. Prince
©2014
C.J. Prince Poet 