#napowrimo2016

 It’s that time of year again. 

NaPoWriMo begins today (and that’s no April fools’ joke). To celebrate National Poetry Writing month, every day for a month there is a poetry writing prompt. The challenge is to write one poem every day for the whole month.
Today, the challenge was to write a lune. This is a sort of English-language haiku. While the haiku is a three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable count, the lune is a three-line poem with a 5-3-5 syllable count. There’s also a variant based on word-count, instead of syllables count, where the poem still has three lines, but the first line has five words, the second line has three words, and the third line has five words again.

I chose this latter form to use for my poem today. 

   (Photo credit: Tracy Kaye Photography)

dinner on the deck

the cardinals always come–
strutting red coats,
snapping seeds in a single crunch.

the dark eyed junco hops
tentatively to feed,
nervously glancing side to side.

the chickadees flit over gently
with great decorum
landing lightly on the feeder.

sparrows hide in the bushes
waiting their turn,
hanging out in patient packs.

the house finch dines together
with the others–
sparrow, chickadee, cardinal and junco.

when the blue jay plows
in to feed,
the sea of birds part;

but the noisy starlings’ arrival
clears everyone out–
iridescent bullies chasing away friends.