Sunday, April 28, 2019

NPM 2019 Day 28: Acrostic Riddle

For more than 10 years I've been working on a series of riddle poems on animal collectives. I'm not sure why I've been stuck on this topic, but perhaps it's because I love words and collective nouns are a fascinating bunch of words. Here's one of the riddle poems, written as an acrostic.

Sticklike legs step and strut
Through tidal flats, mangrove swamps
Awash in pink and vermilion
Noisy honking keeps us together as we
Dig and forage for meals in the mud

Who are we?

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2017. All rights reserved.


My thought in writing these poems is that the collective noun would appear somewhere in the poem, along with clues to the animal. Once the reader turns the page, the animal would be revealed, along with some factual information.

For the above animal, you may be more familiar with the term flamboyance, but a group of these birds is also called a stand.
Image from article Beauty From the Bottom Up

Happy Sunday all. See you tomorrow for another original poem.

1 comment:

  1. I somehow think a flamboyance should be reserved for the huge groups seen by satellite, and a stand just for on the ground sightings.

    I think this would be a fun book idea.

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