Uncertainty

The fun of exploring abstract nouns is the area of uncertainty. They are not “ascertainable or fixed, as in time of occurrence, number, dimensions, or quality; not clearly or precisely determined.” They are “vague; indistinct; not perfectly apprehended: subject to change; variable; capricious; unstable: ambiguous; unreliable; undependable (definition of uncertain from dictionary.com).”

Uncertainty can be exciting, it adds mystery, raises questions, leaves blanks to be filled. It inspires exploration, and promises adventure to the optimist. But uncertainty is also the breeder of fears. Absolutely everything is an uncertainty except taxes and death, as the saying goes, so how can I approach that visually?

I recently ordered four strands of clear lights. I was thinking of creating a grid on the porch and laying under it, but today it’s raining, so I think I’ll try surrounding myself with lights like a waterfall and see what happens. The effect is uncertain. How exciting.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt, based on the “aisling” form, Irish for dream, is to write a poem that recounts a dream or vision in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area where you live.

I created a character called the Lake Spirit years ago to explain why so many young, athletic men die in the lake every summer (it seems like every summer, but I don’t have data on that). Her origin story, “Deadly Again This Summer,” was published in America’s Emerging Fantasy Writers: Pacific Region in 2019. Her name is Ondinara, and she will be appearing in today’s dream poem.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a response poem. I think Ondinara might come in a dream in response to the events in my poem, “Suspending Belief,” from Day Fourteen.

The Poem

A Desperate Hunger to Consume

With the feel of damp
carpet at my bedside
and a distant smell of fish
her haunting words return
“Help me. I’m so hungry.”
Coming back so vividly

Cold spots on my skin
as she dripped, dripped
hovering over me, so
close to my face
sharp teeth like
a tiger muskie
huge dark eyes
like a perch and
the mouth of a bass
and yet the sweet
visage of a girl
still echoed within

She said she had held me
and shown me the way
when I Iost my will to
surface and my lungs
began to beg

She said she felt my longing
to become one with the lake
and in that moment felt a kinship
and reflected on her fate

So she came to me in dreaming
so I might hear her water words
and understand her nature
before the hunger overwhelms
and she must consume