First bloom! Pumpkin sonnets

Yesterday evening, the pumpkin plant's first buds looked full and yellow and ready to burst.

July 16, 2014 about 9:00 pm

July 17, 2014 about 9:00 am

I took inspiration for my morning writing from the pumpkin plants and the new flowers. "10 lines of iambic pentameter," I though to myself, "that will be easy." I've written about the pumpkin for so many years now. I figured sitting on a stool with my notebook right beside the plant would allow me to write freely and quickly. After a good forty-five minutes, I went inside to my computer with one scratchy page of writing--too scratchy even to count lines accurately.

I typed and redrafted extensively at my desk, all the while feeling less certain that the effort and time put into the exercise made any sense at all. I'm still not sure. But I have fourteen lines, some of which push boundaries of iambic pentameter past where I can comfortably evaluate them. Multi-syllable words and shifting emphases (anapests, trochees, dactyls and anything else that feels differently weighted) are a challenge. On the other hand, I've wanted to push past relying on one-syllable words connected by articles, conjunctions and prepositions. So, I give you fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, vaguely in the form of a sonnet.

[First bloom] 

Broad green leaves, part maple-shaped, part heart,
cleft and round where hollow stem meets veins
of beige that branch and re-branch to each leaf’s edge,
shade-making, dew-holding, chlorphylled veil,
a membrane lofty, thin and brave, prepares
to be sustenance for fruit that’s yet to come,
to shelter it from heavy rain and sun,
transforming light and air to feed new buds
now bursting through the calming cover of leaves
like jesters’ hats of wrinkled orange-gold.
They beckon flying creatures to come and coat
their bellies and bee-hinds in yellow powder
    then buzz away to roses, phlox or cat-mint—
    too soon to find and bless a pumpkin’s mate.

The first pumpkin nectar for bees in 2014.

July 17, 2014 First potential pumpkin of the season,
with adult human female toenail for scale comparison.

I recalled today that I wrote a sonnet about the pumpkin in 2008 while taking Tim O'Keefe's English 2500 Introduction to Creative Writing at the University of Utah. I was forty-five years old in a mostly undergraduate-aged class. I believe it is fair to say I cut my teeth in Tim's class. The pumpkin sonnet was my back-up, and the class much preferred my much less traditional dishwasher sonnet. (If I hear any requests, I'll post the dishwasher sonnet, too.) From February 2008:

[I grow a pumpkin aching back to you] 

I grow a pumpkin aching back to you,
My dear sweet child, my babe, my first-born son.
A sprouted seed held in a cup it grew—
At first we let it languish without sun.
Yet something urged me plant it in the earth
To carry on what school friends had not doubted
By sticking pumpkin seeds in soot-brown dirt
And watching awestruck as each green shoot sprouted.
Bent-backed, broad-leaved it crawled on thick-vined knee:
Straight toward your sick room restlessly it tore
As if wild growth could ease your agony.
One fruit all golden, full and round it bore
    That you might live beyond your seventh year
    And I, the tender, hold you thus still near.