Here's a free associative poem. I just started with a phrase and let it lead me wherever it wanted to. This poems involved less conscious shaping than any of the others, which is both a strength and a weakness.
(The title is a reference to Smokey the Bear, a cartoon character who urged people to stop the forests from burning through their careless use of matches and campfires.)
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires
“Three moves equal one fire,” my friend always says,
but most moves are for the better despite the damage
to the furniture, until the last move to the nursing home
when everything is left behind. When there’s a fire
there, it’s usually on the coldest night of the year
and the TV news shows all the residents in walkers
and wheelchairs, shivering on the sidewalk, some of
them thinking it’s the forest fire from Bambi which they
saw as a kid, but not all fires are caused by careless
hunters. Sometimes lightning strikes once or twice
and starts a fire that clears the forest undergrowth
and even fertilizes the soil so things can grow back
better. When farmers fertilize their fields, they can
improve their yields, but the run-off can strangle
the rivers and form dead spots in the sea, like the one
in the Gulf, not far from the BP oil spill – which was
supposed to ruin all the wildlife but some oil-hungry
bacteria helped save us, like all the friendly bacteria
that help us digest food or inoculate us against disease,
but we’re so busy killing germs with bleach and soap
that more and more people are getting allergic to life.
“The fire next time,” the Bible says, and we’ve made
the world so dirty clean, perhaps it’s time to move.
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