poetry 2017 /071

Today, I challenge you to write a poem that incorporates the vocabulary and imagery of a specific sport or game. Your poem could invoke chess or baseball, hopscotch or canasta, Monopoly or jai alai. The choice is yours!

Powers and Perils

Merry, we travel the land

avoiding goblins, Bards we have,

with skills of singing and music making;

crafting stories of gods and men,

elves and creatures of the dark.

A magician, too, travels apace--

an illusionist who deals with the knots

and ribbons of a man's mind; an

engineer, crafting energy into light

and bare earth into money-making roads.

Merry, we travel the land,

accosted by trolls and goblins,

beset by traps and unscrupulous mayors,

Telplars of an angry god preaching death.

We pass them by, and wish them well,

these sirens of a secular night

who seek our death in dungeon dark

while those in light face flame and foe.

Merry, we walk the land

we demons of the Queerest sort;

our blunted swords of liberal hope

and rainbow shields chipped and nocked

against the tide of evil Right

and commonplace complacency.

We walk the land.