Mowing      

                a sound beside the wood
                                       whispering
What was        whispered? I know not

               it was something

                                it whispered and did not speak.
                                    the gift of
                                                  fay  or elf:
              the sweetest dream
                         whispered and left.

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Day 26, Poem 26:
Today's poetry prompt was:
" And now, the (optional) prompt. This one’s a bit tricky, but I’ve used it to good effect in the past — and it’s the sort of thing you can do over and over again. Back in 1977, the poet Ronald Johnson first published RADI OS, an “erasure” of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Basically, Johnson took a copy of Milton’s long poem, and systematically erased whole words and even lines, while maintaining the relative position of the remaining words. You can see a brief excerpt here. Today, I challenge you to perform an erasure of your own."

Of course, I had to choose a Robert Frost poem, since he is my favorite poet! Here is his original "Mowing" for you to compare the two and see what I erased.


Mowing
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I know not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something perhaps, about the lack of sound— 5
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was not dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, 10
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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Thank you, Lord, for this poetry writing challenge. It was just the "kick in the pants" I needed to start writing again. Thank you also for my cousin, Carol, who brought the challenge to my attention and encouraged me to try it. Not only am I finally writing again, because of the daily prompts, I have tried writing forms of poetry that I had never attempted before. A simple prayer, I know; but an honest one. Love you, Lord. ~ Amen