I will give you the prompt for today from NaPoWriMo so you will know why I dare write after Sylvia Plath.  Her poem included.

And now for our prompt (as always, it’s optional!). In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. The result could be a bit like our Day One poems of negation, but the lines don’t need to be expressed in negatives. To get you thinking, here’s one of my favorite examples of a “riddle” poem – Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors”:

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Hori Hori

After Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in four syllables,

sharp as a Gemini.  I bite

like a dragon, teeth

serate or slice. I repeat myself.

Two of five elements,

I strike at your whim.

Dualistic but even tempered.

I am rigged for hard work.

Without me, tulips fail.

I’ve eaten grit in your honor,

am more practical than an averrcunator.

You think me foreign;

however, I assist earnest earth-workers

on bended knee.

~C.J. Prince

©2015