Zelda's Inferno exercise: "the glistening brittle bones of winter"

Posted on: Sun, 01/23/2011 - 20:42 By: Tom Swiss

This week's Zelda's Inferno writing exercise: write a poem from the following wordlist based (in theory...) on the idea "trees in winter": shopvac um glistening storage brittle sappening waiting bones reaching creaking shelter gripping

the road cut thru Sideling Hill
even here, where man has moved (part of) the mountain
the laws of the season hold sway and

the glistening brittle bones of winter
reach down like seasonal stalactites
gripping the rock face

wait only a few weeks and they will flow away
the stone, in its way, flows too
so much more slowly

it's a question of perception --
look quickly enough and fire is solid
look slowly enough and stone is fluid
compared to the vacuum of space, air is nearly as dense
as the ground
the speedy neutrino zips thru the empty spaces and sees
lead as no harder than gossamer

does this winter seem cold? ask the night side of icy Pluto
(planet or not)
or the day side of rocky Mercury

but here the ice and rock are together
like models of each other run at different speeds
an artistic scientific display for anyone driving by