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To a Budding Ode
with apologies to John Keats
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I’m in the mood to crack your odic code;
To load your stanzas in the mode of Keats—
Acanthus leaf-fringed Grecian urns bestowed
To you with rhythmic pipe and timbrel beats.
My bardic bent may hit the odd bum note.
My misty autumn might not be as mellow.
My brightest star could lack galactic heights.
Bear with me. I intend to win your vote
By gleaning pearls from this romantic fellow
I’ll swathe you in the sheen of sylvan sights.
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A gleeful spread of trees that never shed
Will elevate your charismatic clout.
Be-daisied leas where dainty maidens tread
Through fleecy flocks will leave no trace of doubt
That I (a would-be weaver of silk words)
Will lace your grayest space with golden tales.
Your lyric lift will be melodic proof
That thorns won’t snuff the serenade of birds.
I’ll buff the breasts of lilting nightingales
To shine in lines of beauty. That’s the truth!
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Nutkin
You weave and cleave through fallen autumn leaves
That litter sprawling lawns in crispy heaps.
__You bob along the eaves.
You romp in gnarly trees where Winter creeps
With whisperings of death on frosty lips—
__A ghastly pledge
That fires desire in you to get to grips
With feats to keep your fate from famine’s edge.
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You prick fierce ears and flick your tufty tail,
Enchanting spies with eyes trained on your verve.
__You navigate a trail
Of treasures with each ounce of nous and nerve,
Till swells of shell-clad gems are hidden well
__From bird and beast
Ensorcelled by the sneak-a-pecan spell.
No paw or beak will steal your secret feast.
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Your nosy foes abhor your foxy splash
Of ginger tinged with grey. Your puffed-up air
__Of fluffy-brush panache
And flash of ratty dash snared in their glare
Kindle emerald sparks that warn of war.
__It’s nuts, nuts, nuts!
‘Tis clawed upon the log of squirrel lore—
With grit and guts preserve your nutty gluts!
first published in Snakeskin
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Ode to a Banana
Your slip-and-skid allure ignites a grin
With slapstick sunbeam-skin that’s slick with harm.
You’ve sent the soles of souls into a spin—
I bow to your banana-drama charm.
And yet beneath your loony layer lies
A flavor tongues have savored on their tip:
An aromatic flourish of Botswana—
An unzipped, creamy, sweet and dreamy prize
That takes me on a lush and pipless trip
To fields that yield the wonder of Nirvana.
first published in Snakeskin
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Ode to an Opossum
You skulk as starlight oozes through the leaves
To dapple fur in ripples of the night.
Marble-statue-still I see you freeze—
Your alabaster face, a ghostly sight.
Your glinting eyes of jet as sharp as flint—
Two beady ebon orbs where moonbeams revel.
I marvel at your snoopy, rosy nose
All slick and flecked with muck—a sticky hint
Of juicy nasties grubbing muzzles shovel
From depths where pulpous morsels decompose.
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I’ve seen you playing dead to stay alive.
I ponder on the corpses of your kin
All rigor-mortis stiff. Did each survive
The Reaper’s scythe? Your thespian within
(That legend of the death-defying day)
Intrigues me with that drop-and-drool routine:
The curl of claw, the reek of rot—a smell
From hell that keeps rapacious beasts at bay—
A scene to faze the meanest drama queen.
It serves your scheming genus very well.
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But, most of all I laud and I applaud
Just what your wacky habits do for me.
I see beyond the eerie-featured fraud
To bright and bug-free, backyard harmony.
Your jaws will gnaw on vile and viscid critters—
Those that squirm and scuttle through the grass.
Your fruitful, rooting snout will never miss
A crunchy lunch that gives me fits of jitters.
Marsupial of the cockroach-munching class,
You bless my life with warm, alfresco bliss.
first published in Expansive Poetry Online
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Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.
These brilliant poems should endure for centuries! Each one is crafted by your unique skill set that enchants and is seared into the mind. These in particular enthralled me with your wonderful alliteration, crisp and vivid sensory impact, exquisite rhyme, and nonpareil employment of words and phrases leading me to continued overwhelming admiration.
Roy, what a beautiful comment. Thank you so very much for your appreciation of my work. I adore writing poetry and try to master my craft with every new poem I write. I know I am only as good as my last poem. It’s wonderful words like yours that let me know I’m doing something right.
a great demonstration of your usual skill with words and metre –Botswana and Nirvana-eh must be a unique coupling.
Dave, whenever I get a comment like this from you, I know I’m doing something right. Your poetry is why I chose the classic path… and I have never looked back. Dave – THANK YOU!! Like I always say when you comment here, please submit your sonnets for everyone to enjoy! You need a much wider audience, and we’re waiting for your genius!
Susan, I am flabbergasted at your seemingly non-stop flow of wonderful poetry. I love all of these and especially Nutkin’s nuts, nuts, nuts. It is delightful. I didn’t even know about Nutkin until I looked it up, and I thought an opossum was similar to a disgusting rat but on research, it is a very beneficial animal. Thank you for all of this totally entertaining, joyful wordplay.
Norma, a very warm thank you for your lovely comment. Nutkin (named after Beatrix Potter’s beauty) lives in our backyard. He is a fox squirrel with a nut fetish that has him acting like a trapeze artist on our overhead wires… all with pecans in his mouth and a mission on his mind. I’m glad you’ve looked up the opossum – I have come to love “Skip” (the British word for a dumpster), our resident opossum… he cleans our backyard. He really does eat sh%t. We never have to pick up our pets’ droppings! I have heard these critters can get nasty… so far so good… I’m still keeping a safe distance.
These are all a lot of fun, Susan! I especially love the rhymes you found for banana.
Thank you, Cynthia. I had huge fun with the banana…an underrated fruit that simply begged for an ode. Mike said the rhymes are much better in the Queen’s English than Texan!
The motif you’ve observed on Grecian urns and described as “fern-fringed” might just be Acanthus. And you might just be the Mother L’Ode.
C.B., thank you for the fern pointer. I like ferns – they intrigue me. I’m not an expert on Acanthus, but I do know they figure highly in Greek art and architecture. They’re beautiful. “Mother L’Ode” is pure genius… I’m wearing the label with pride!
C.B., I’ve taken your expertise on board and have changed the line accordingly… thank you very much for your wisdom.
I wrote, Susan, “might just be.” I hope you checked it out begore making the change.
These are all great, Susan… but my favorite is the first; the concept of an ode to odes is a really interesting idea. I guess you’d call it a meta-ode (by analogy to metatheater)? I also enjoyed the references to Keats.
Joshua, I’m thrilled you like the odes, and I love your “meta-ode” concept. I dipped into Keats before writing it to whet my appetite for the form… and then had huge fun writing it! I’m glad some of my fun rubbed off. Thank you!
Nice to see Bananas brought into the poetic fold here. I’ve been beset by banana verses for some time, it’s good to see another poet also afflicted:
Banana pie, Banana pie,
it’s like a meteor from the sky,
you’d better duck or you will die,
impacted by Banana pie.
How do you eat Banana pie
With a fork or a spoon?
And do you share it with a Grebe,
A Bittern, or a Loon?
Banana pie, Banana pie,
It is a fragrant fruit,
Which causes you to go “My, my!”
And then go “Toot, toot, toot!”
Fred, you never fail to surprise me and to make me smile. Although, I have to admit bananas are one of the most grin-inducing of fruits, and your poem is a delightfully, delicious hoot! It has made me crave banoffee pie… a favorite in my homeland… although, the side effects of a slice might rob me of Christmas company. Fred, thank you!
Susan, thank you for these lovely works. I especially liked the ode to the opossum. The line “I’ve seen you playing dead to stay alive” is a wordsmithing marvel.
Mary, thank you very much indeed. I love that line too. How intriguing the opossum is. I am drawn to their canny quirkiness and had only recently learned that they give off a foul odor when playing dead to make the shocking moment even more authentic. I’ve learned to love and respect them… Skip (our backyard cutie) is part of the family… although I’ll NEVER invite him in.
Gosh, where to start. Being a big Keats fan, it was delightful to track the dense forest of references to his works, all so smoothly layered in. (I’d hate to have to footnote that one!)(Actually, I wouldn’t anything to do with Keats is fun.) I always like your ear and polish and dedication to continue polishing, but I think I enjoyed the multiple layers in the poem the best. Addressing the ode as a person, while taking the chance to glance askance at Keats, sending himself up and yourself, all while dealing out allusions like a pro at Vegas. Very enjoyable!
Daniel, thank you very much for this sensational and inspirational comment… I especially love your “taking the chance to glance askance at Keats” – it’s made me smile… broadly. And as for your “dealing out allusions like a pro at Vegas” compliment – I’m wearing that one as a badge of honor.
Susan, you have a poetic style that is as distinctive and ingenious as Mozart. You never fail to entertain, you never fail to present delightfully intricate and coruscating wordplay in the service of subtantial meaning. Each of these odes is an ode-ious (not odious!) delight!
I love your “To a Budding Ode” which is very diligent in its use of ode form in exploring the “odic code” but with a sassy tone which allows you to rhyme “truth” and “proof” and smilingly dare us to not let you get away with it! I surrender! And that playful “be-daisied!” What a grin you’ve given me — especially when you have a last line which references truth and beauty in a most original way but which pays obvious homage to that iconic Grecian Urn. This is a poem I will save and reread whenever I get writer’s block.
I also greatly enjoyed “Nutkin.” It takes a writer of great confidence to be able to write a line like “It’s nuts, nuts, nuts.”! You capture the manic charm of the little squirrel wonderfully.
An ode to a banana is not something one sees everyday, but if not you then who? You prove that any subject on God’s earth can become the subject of a poem! And I’m both enchanted by and envious of your “Botswana”/”Nirvana” rhyme.
As for the opossum. It’s a fantastic poem but I have little sympathy for the critter. I was bitten and mauled by a possum 6 years ago in Oregon (perhaps I’ll write a poem about it.) A trip to Urgent Care and permanent scars on my leg have left me disenchanted with the little buggers. That being said, I agree with your approval this his “…fruitful, rooting snout will never miss
A crunchy lunch that gives me fits of jitters.”
All great, rhapsodic fun! Thank you, Susan!
Brian, what an amazing opening sentence to a comment that has me brimming with gratitude and glee. “Ode-ious” has me smiling and your truth/proof observation has me nodding… I was sniggering as I wrote it. I’m thrilled you like “be-daisied.” I simply couldn’t resist hamming it up a little.
You pick up on the joy I had crafting these. I knew “… nuts, nuts, nuts!” would lift a few eyebrows, as well as my choice of a banana to lavish my attentions upon in an ode. I thought if Carol Ann Duffy can write about an onion in a valentine poem, I can peel back the layers of a banana for an ode.
And oh dear! Your traumatic tale of that savage mauling by a critter I’ve come to warm to has removed any desire to reach out and pat Skip, our backyard dustbin. I’ll just gaze at him from a safe distance and hug him in gratitude through the bars of a rhyme.
Brian, thank you very much indeed!
I read Ode to an Octopus a while back and loved it.
I think Ode to an Opossum is just as good, with just the right amount of internal rhyming and alliteration helping to give a complete, rounded picture of a much-maligned beastie.
Paul, thank you very much for this. I’ve come to love writing odes, especially about subjects many wouldn’t associate that form with. It’s a challenge I enjoy.
Brilliant! You always manage to entertain and provoke thought.
Rohini, I thoroughly appreciate your lovely comment. Thank you!