Today’s prompt was a welcome relief from the one from yesterday. I found that one very challenging. But today, I was challenged to write a different kind of acrostic poem.

In this variation, rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I had to write a poem that reproduced a phrase with the first words of each line.

I chose to use a snippet from one of my most favorite poems by Mary Oliver. I chose to use two or three word acrostic beginnings instead of a single word or letter.

If you read the bold italic words, you will see my favorite lines from this poem. If you read the poem as is, you will see my poem. It’s a bit of “poem in a poem” on this rainy and dreary Wednesday morning.

Excerpt from a Mary Oliver poem:

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

— Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

Tell Me

Tell me, does the journey get easier with time;
what else is there to do?
Should I be the one to pull the stars? I
have done greater things, l think.

Doesn’t everything decompose in time,
die at last, shrivel to dust,
and too soon? Too soon. Much too soon. 

Tell me, about your great
“What is it”—I certainly do not know;
you plan, but life twists and turns.

To do great things doesn’t require planning
with your head, it requires simply
one wild dream, a singular hope,
and precious night skies full of stars—

Life lived to the fullest.

-cjpjordan