Mid-Month Challenge: March

March's Community Poem was an exercise in form and style. It is a challenge to explore our grief in a kind of literary box--a good challenge in my mind. This month's mid-month challenge is to take one of the stanza's of March's Community Poem Exquisite Corpse in Terza Rima and use it as an inspiration for your own piece of art, craft or poetry. You can create a haiku out of the words used in a stanza, or a painting, or just use one word as the beginning of a poem. It is really a challenge to turn the form on its head. There were so many wonderful images in this poem from which to build; hopefully, you will find inspiration within this piece.

To submit for the March Mid-Month Challenge, please send your art or poem to stilllife365days(at)gmail(dot)com by March 14th. The pieces will be published on March 15th.  Please use March Challenge as the subject line. For your piece, please reference the stanza by the Roman Numeral I have designated in the beginning of each stanza (if you want to use the title, you are also welcome to do that.) I am going to organize the pieces in that way as well. Good luck and have fun with it.

Exquisite Corpse in Terza Rima
I.    Fall in the river swiftly flowing,
      destination completely unknown.
      Dragged below, the current not slowing,

II.   but everyday my love for you has grown.
      Although you will forever be so small,
      just dust and ashes now, not flesh and bone.

III.   A spark, and the darkness over all,
       Your light gone to a place we cannot go.
       Does hope just give you farther down to fall?

IV.  Your death delivered an earth-shattering blow.
       A wound which places all past heartbreak to shame
       when compared to the daily tears that flow.

V.    I read a book to find your name.
        I stumble along, then see it, blurred.
        It's yours, but gone, and still the same.

VI.   As much as I'm heartbroken that this occurred,
        your life means more than most will ever know.
        So I will spend my life making your story heard.

VII.  Remove the cords and free my child. Now tow
        me to the shore or I would drown beneath her weight --
        mere pounds in bruised and bluish flesh but tons in mother’s woe.

VIII. No prayers left, surrendering to my fate,
         I stare in wonder at the tiny grace,
         wrap blankets ‘round three hearts and close the gate.

IX.    Dark waves fall over the arms housing my empty embrace,
         Carrying future to the sea, leaving Grief in its place.