A King Comes #NaPoWriMo2017 #GloPoWriMo2017

See how your King shall come riding to you?
Not a warrior astride proud battle steed –
On a donkey’s foal as poor servants do;
Greeted with palm branches now freshly freed,
Upon dirt roads dressed with cloaks from the crowd;
Acclaimed heir to a hero king: his son,
“Hosanna!” called out deafeningly loud;
A week begins – Son’s duty to be done,
The cruellest week of all – when souls must be hard won

One of my favourite learning experiences from Na/GloPoWriMo2016 was the challenge of trying new forms of poetry which move us away from our personal preferences or comfort zones. For Day 9 of Na/GloPoWriMo2017, the official prompt at NaPoWriMo.net asked us to write a nine-line poem, for example as used by Sir Edmund Spenser when he wrote The Faerie Queene , using a nine-line form of his own devising. This poem uses that ‘Spenserian Stanza‘ – a rhyme scheme of a. b. a. b. c. d. c. d. d., employing Iambic Pentameter, with the last line in Iambic Hexameter with caesura.

The inspiration comes from Jesus’s ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem, as told in the bible’s gospel of Matthew, at 21:1-11

A Steadfast Spirit

Create in me a pure heart
Renew a steadfast spirit;
Make me tenacious
In pursuit if Your purpose –
Humble is serving Your aims

written in tanka form as a prayer in response to today’s prompt at The Daily Post, inspired in part by Psalm 51:10

Destiny Beckons

Destiny beckons
En route to Jerusalem
Eternity waits
History as prophesied
For the sake of mankind’s souls

Jesus comes to Jerusalem as king
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival
heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,
‘Hosanna!’
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
‘Blessed is the king of Israel!’
Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written:
‘Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.’
At first his disciples did not understand all this.
Only after Jesus was glorified
did they realise that these things had been written about him
and that these things had been done to him.
– John 12:12-16

‘The Donkey’ by G. K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

― G.K. Chesterton