Fun with Collective Nouns

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to choose a short line from a beloved book as the title of the poem, then once the poem is written, completely change the title. At first I had trouble deciding which book to draw from, but then my eyes rested on my beautiful copy of A Compendium of Collective Nouns from Woop Studios.

The A to Z Challenge is to write a sentence without the letter E. My Janus word is execute: to execute a person is to end their life; to execute a program is to start it.

Today is the first two for Tuesday at the Poem-a-Day Challenge:

1. Write a change poem and/or
2. Write a don’t change poem

Wise Wombat Moon

A wisdom of wombats
is said to have
a unique defense system

thus intrigued
I read on to learn
their prized wise way

like a gaze of raccoons, I turn
and rinse the text for clues

like a wriggle of worms, I churn
through the dark, rich words

like a blessing of unicorns, I home
the unique

like a doom of dragons, I stalk
their defense

then I find it,
the trove of treasure
the secret to their system

when under duress
what performance are the
wise ones uniquely wired to execute?

with thick cartilage
and lack of tail, they dive
into burrows headlong

leaving their predators
with nothing protruding
to grab onto

they do not change colors
like a lounge of chameleons

nor do they change spots
like a hypnosis of cuttlefish

they do not stand tall and growl
like a maul of bears

they do not bare their teeth and howl
like a pack of wolves

in other words
they turn [tail] and run
showing their hunters their bums

Oh, wise, wise
wombat moon
shine in the face of danger