[Martin Elster]

Track-Maker

You scent the steamy morning air
While crawling up onto the beach
This day which we could never reach,
Even in visions. Everywhere

Cycads, ferns, horsetails, scale trees
And Archaeopteris’s fronds
Lounge around the coastal ponds
To supplement that ancient breeze

With oxygen, allowing you
To breathe and grow and colonize
The land. Quick-darting dragonflies
As large as cats regard you while

Your hunger causes you to chase
Invertebrates. Though you now creep
Across the sand, you’ve kept the deep
Inside your blood — as did our race:

We swam in warm lagoons, and so
Our skin became devoid of down;
Yet endless locks hung from our crown
For swimming with our kids in tow.

Why do we still adore the shore?
You loiter in our memory,
While surging through us is the sea —
And will no matter what’s in store.

(28 Nov. 2010)

[Martin Elster]

[Poem removed by author.]

[basil ransome-davies]

Holy moly, people are pulling out all the stops on this one, while I, like Jayne 2 days ago, am still searching hungrily for an idea. Perhaps this is what's troubling me, deflecting the muse:

The fuzz in Texas are a pain.
They've busted Willie once again,
A Texan of whom – say it loud –
His home state should be mighty proud.
What kind of bottom-feeding assholes
Would want to give our Willie hassles?

[Martin Elster]

That made me laugh, Bazza. Here's another one I came up with today.

[This poem found a home.]

[John Whitworth]

Martin - I love your turtle.

[basil ransome-davies]

I'm thinking of pairing 'suit' with 'hirsute' on the grounds that in standard pronunciation we insert a 'y' between the 's' & the 'u' of the latter but not the former – ergo, true rhyme. Any thoughts?

bazza

[Spindleshanks]

I take it you mean between the first two letters of the latter's stressed syllable? Works for me. Room/perfume, do/view, etc. Do it all the time. Go for it.

Peter

[basil ransome-davies]

Thanks for your reply, Peter, & for clarifying my foggy, inaccurate expression, which I have now corrected. But your examples don't quite fit the issue that's concerning me, which is about homophones v. true rhymes.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Bazza - that would be a true rhyme in my book - suit/hirsyute/you beaut.

[basil ransome-davies]

Thanks, Cally. I don't think I am doing the equivalent of rhyming, say, 'loot' with 'lute' or 'bare' with 'bear' & I want to keep what I have written, but I'm glad of supportive comment from other practitioners.

bazza