On Thursday, my friend Matt Randles (also a writer) sent me the meme above and said, “Use any (or all!) of these words in your next poem.” Being an overachiever (at least, when I feel like it), I immediately decided I would try to use all the words in a poem.
I’m not sure what makes these words “perfect,” but they are cool. Besides mote, zenith, and alight, they were unfamiliar to me. Sometime Friday, I started trying to wrangle these words into a poem, and by now I have a solid draft (if not a finished poem…I’m still deciding). Draft or finished, I thought I’d share what I have. This was a surprisingly fun attempt, and broke me out of my writing routine.
For now, I’m using the title “Perfect Words” (the title of the meme). But without further explanation, it doesn’t make much sense with the poem. If anyone has a title idea, put it in the comments below! If I pick your title, I’ll send you a free copy of The Anonymity of Waiting, which I plan to self-publish later this year. It will include this poem of “perfect words.”
Perfect Words
A murmuration of starlings alights
in a marcescent maple.
The sibilant susurrus of smur
saturates the air.
Everything wears the cement shoes
of gray and damp.
No one can say if
the sun will reach its zenith today
or if there is a sun
but beneath the maple
in the cracked sidewalk,
a mote of red,
the wild, ruderal rose,
grows towards it anyway.
A Wandering Minstrel 