[And now for today’s prompt: Today I challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet. There are a couple of ways of doing this. You could write a poem of 26 words, in which each word begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. You could write a poem of 26 lines, where each line begins with a successive letter.]
Making sense of the letters in my soup
As i gaze out on another African sunset
Black clouds gather in the distance
Creating the possibility of bad weather interrupting my highly anticipated view
Despair might easily set in
Except that i have chosen to rather be filled with hope
Focusing on the beauty that is before me and not
Giving in to the trouble that may lie on the horizon.
Hope lies firmly in sharing in all the good stories being created around me
Instead of listening to the cacophony of anger and pain rising up
Jostling for position as to who owes what and when will it all just be enough.
Keep calm and breathe, i tell myself
Lest i, like so many others, get swept up in the distressed and depressed
Momentum that seems to be building up around me
Negating those things which would tell us everything is going to be okay
Oh, but will it? i ask myself
Perhaps i am too idealistic or optimistic or over-enthusiastic in my belief that
Questions the tide that seems to be building up so much steam
Reasonable doubt keeps me from throwing in the towel and
Surrendering like so many who have sold everything and given all their money
To the people selling the plane tickets to the greener grass on the other side
Until you get there and glance back and are surprised by the
View which lets you know that your grass was greener still
Where will i land on all this?
X marks the spot and right now that spot is beneath the very ground where i stand
You may kill me here but as the very first cut draws blood you will see that
Zuid Afrika runs deeply in my veins…
[to return to the beginning of this poetry challenge and catch up on the story so far, click here]
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LOVED THIS…hope rises up within as I read and would love to hear this performed actually!
Great work! You took up that challenge and did amazing!