Today’s Verselove prompt comes from Denise. She encouraged us to borrow some rhyming words to craft a poem of our choice.

Rhyme is one of those techniques I mostly stay far away from. Rhythm, yes. Word play? I’m in. But rhyme challenges me–it feels too forced or too trite or just too obvious.

But in the spirit of trying and working to craft something meaningful, I turned to Emily Dickinson and her very well known poem, “Hope” is the Thing with Feathers and borrowed some rhyming words–as well as using her title as inspiration on the slant for my title.

An afternoon at the Monterey Bay Aquarium under the influence of the sea–both inside the aquarium and outside in the wilds of the magnificent Monterey Bay provided the content: jellies, the giant Pacific octopus, the grumpy looking moray eel to name just a few.

Hope Unfeathered

In depths of blue

another world appears

breaths unbodied

inside out tears

Spiraling within an octopus soul

rages a tentacled suctioning storm

transformational power of the rainbow

a palette of colors from cooling to warm

Some float and bob

unnoticed unheard

hope unfeathered

fantastical creatures, marine mammals, and birds

Under the spell of the sea

wild wet weirdly wonderful

I splash in the mystery of extremity

so much to explore–just the ocean and me

@kd0602