Repeat Performance

Response to the Promposity March Challenge, “In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb”

Bucolic breezes wait in wings Mindfully counting their entrance When gestured they comes hither to By soft sung song of springtime sacrosanct She checks her careful nature So as not to inflame And thus delay her season debut When she will assume the chariot’s reigns To impose her will on the lingering breath Of winter waif grown weak and weary In the shortened days And darkened nights Of her appointed time-held place

This poem takes the March theme of “In like a lion, out like lamb,” and sets it on its head a bit. In the poem, I first personified the elements of nature, then envisioned how they might interact, especially in the moments when spring arrives to supplant winter.

We see this transition as being a continuum, where winter days begin to get longer and the temperature grows milder until there are enough warm days in a row that we recognize spring has finally fully arrived. Yet when thinking of the seasons in a personified manner, as they can’t both be in charge at the same time, there must be a moment when one takes over from the other.

I have envisioned winter in a different way than I usually do, seeing it as a waif, a thin, female adolescent figure, homeless, neglected, and abandoned by others who has become tired after her long service in such trying circumstances. I’m not sure if my current vision of winter is such that this is how she started out, or if she became this way over the winter months because she is the harshest of the four seasons, is isolated and alone and what is required exhausts her.

This personification is different from the more traditional approach I usually take to winter. I normally envision it more as a large stout man or godlike figure with a long white beard and white disheveled hair, clutching some sort of staff which he uses to call up the worst of winter weather whenever he loses his violent temper. Rather than relief at being able to hang it up for another year, this view of winter is one of fighting to remain in control through sheer force, only turning over control when he has no other choice.

I love trying to personify the seasons since as opposed to being just inanimate objects, they already seem to have a life and personality of their own. This makes it easy to start seeing each one as a unique being and to generate an image filled out with an appearance and characteristics that provide a framework for how they interact in those brief moments of overlap.

Just as winter turned over the reigns to spring, it’s now my chance to turn over the reigns to my choices of writers to challenge with this prompt to Priyanka Srivastava, Shelby Ensign, Guérin Kà. Let’s see you bring it!

For more information about how to submit to this challenged, please see below:

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had her poetry featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost. Her fiction has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol.

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