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Tuesday, 3 April 2012

NaPoWriMo3: The Water Rail and Moses

You'll notice I didn't put NaPo2 in here yesterday. The reason is that the formatting was just too weird to transfer it from my thread on PFFA, its original spot on the Internet, to the blog. That'll teach me to keep away from too much typographic experimentation during these things! But on that note, here is day three:

The Water Rail and Moses
 

She transgresses warm waters:
distorted kiwi, beak too short
and bright to be a curlew's;

wears a similar fibre-blend
of brown-tan feathers.
Her eyes are dabs of blood.

Had her feet
trod the ancient reeds,
her sharming might have grown

the boy's call sufficiently on
to fruition (frogs, lice, flies,
locusts, all a day's plague

to a migrant rail):
a series of grunts, followed by
a high-pitched piglet-squeal

ending in the purring of contented
squirrels (the territorial claim,
alarm, announcement).

She dips for food, and I am made
to remember manna, her mouth
a pillar of fire with a reed's girth.

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