d’Verse Poetics; The Poet’s Store House

Laura Bloomsbury is tending bar at d’Verse, the pub for poets tonight, and informs us that today is National Thesaurus Day. She tells us she has recently purchased a copy of Hart’s “Thesaurus of the Senses” (I recommend it, beautifully written and collated solely into words that resonate with the five senses) and from it comes the first part of today’s prompt:-

1. Write a SOUND POEM which includes AT LEAST ONE from EACH of the FIVE HEARING CATEGORY SELECTIONS below: (reference the hearing words you chose in your post).

• bellow; clink; drone; jingle; quiver;
• clamour; dissonant; rip-roaring; tempestuous; vociferous;
• dulcet: honeyed; poetic; sonorous; tonal;
• blabber; cackle; dribble; gurgle; seethe;
• beseech; chant; drawl; embellish; intone

The second option is to write about that wonderful storehouse of words, the thesaurus. I tried option number one.

Here’s the thing—

(About that full moon?)

a quiet one, honeyed

humming soft because of the snow 

(now there’s the problem— snow!)

Not because of how it muffled the moonlight

(because remember

moonlight did not gurgle through the tree branches 

didn’t babble like a brook rolling over dissonant rocks

as it might on a clear night

Its light didn’t crackle and jingle as it would on a cold night)

Not to change the subject

not to harp on the problem of snow,

but it’d be good to have the language of the Inuit

to possess a toolkit of nouns 

to apply to the different defining snows;

snow-nouns providing context

imparting specifics

instead of flailing with adjectives inadequate

to the task of describing that veiled Wolf Moon that withheld  its howl

but suffused snow sodden clouds

with intoned cantillations

and drawled soft copper notes 

endlessly echoed by the silent ringing snow.