Mercurial #NaPoWriMo

Squirrels search for their icy nuts in the morning
and can’t find them, did you know?
They buried them so well somewhere

that by the time they want them
they simply cannot retrace the place,
and did you know – wait for it –

this is also how new oak trees are born
by unfound well-hidden nuts?!
How can you not love them for that.  

Single-handedly, these mercurial little creatures
bring forth more oak trees into the world.
All that scarpering and capering

and foraging and hoarding
then inability to find their own nuts
set aside so well for the winter

works a little miracle.  I can
only marvel at nature’s ingenuity
and warped sense of humour.

_{^{© N Nazir 2024}}

NaPoWriMo Prompt 29: If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.

*I used the word “mercurial” from the ten offered (others were: clandestine, Machiavellian, incandescent, altruism, self-effacing, albatross, antithetical, elegy, cardigan)

*one of my favourite nature facts of all time 🐿️

*I’m not a Taylor Swift fan but she is somehow the pied piper of the youth right now and has been for a while. I struggled to find a song that “spoke to me” but I liked the groove of this one.