Brenda Harsham at Friendly Fairy Tales hosts Poetry Friday today with a sweet gathering haiku to lift our spirits.
I missed Michelle Barnes' post last week with Today's Little Ditty's latest challenge, this time from Calef Brown. Briefly, he asked poets to "Write a poem or a story about two anthropomorphized objects. They can be an odd couple, close friends, mortal enemies, or meet each other for the first time. The poem or story can be about an adventure they have together, a conflict, a game they play, anything."
I have been intrigued by this, enjoying the poems on the padlet so far, and wrote one and posted it. But I have had a question in the back of my mind for months that I read somewhere: "Can afraid and brave learn to get along?" I've written more than one poem this year about perspective, something that appears so challenging this politically-charged year. Thus I began a second approach to this challenge. Can I find an answer by writing? What do you think? Did I?
Sometimes It Takes Two
Afraid sees shadows lurking here,
lolling there, most everywhere!
Afraid wants others to recall
they too heard scratching in the wall.
It often queries, “Whence that smell?
What’s the strange sound of a bell?”
When it goes to sleep at night,
Afraid does not turn out the light.
Brave loves shadows as they seem
like artist’s drawings in a dream.
When its ears hear something crunch,
Brave imagines tasty lunch.
It loves all sounds - the wind in trees,
the bells that ring, a person’s sneeze.
And when it’s night, and time for bed,
Brave’s lamp turned off, it rests instead.
Perhaps Afraid can grasp Brave’s hand
to help them both to understand
another way to fill a need,
a simple act that plants a seed.
Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved