Written: September 04, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Nette Onclaud
Verified by H.M.S.COM / 10~7~6 syllables
*************
Lanterns cavort amidst the sodden stone
orchids fade like brief embers
blossoms return as rain
~~
Do you guard the water’s edge,
or watch my vessel glide?
You climb through space, a silent pledge,
to guide the gentle tide.
A voyager of folded sheet,
my crisp white edges free,
where sky and mirrored shadows meet
in quiet harmony.
Without a compass, chart, or strain,
trapped in a fleeting design,
I drift through ripples, rain, and lane,
along a winding line.
And if I soak where waters yield
and sink beneath the clay,
I’ll anchor in a sodden field,
reborn in earth someday.
Rabbit,
run, run!
The farmer doesn’t sleep
while you eat
Run, run!
The storm precedes you,
as it always does
Run, run, little one!
Your heart, like mine
is merely meat
still beating, and warm
inside its fence
We are both
constantly
hungry for something
your red leaf,
your romaine,
your fur-covered flesh is in the dirt
eating away at itself,
so is my colder skin
Little rabbit,
little soul,
my warm-bellied love,
aren’t we both true hunters
of the sodden earth?
the goldfinches,
the steady warblers,
always stop their song
in the stabbing brambles
count the syllables
of silence
in perfect time
making way for thunder
God announces
himself
Shades of grey cascades on rainy days
Petrichor reigns after each pitter patter
Radiance of earthy fragrance does flatter
Teardrops down panes.. splitter splatter
Fades to whiffs chiding riffs spit scatter
Forever about weather they do natter
Seems the one thing that does matter
Flowers cowers at showers which batter
Tiffs as petal in fine fettle does shatter
Down trodden by a sodden mad hatter
Raised bed fed on shed drops clatter
Spoils for alluvial soils a pluvial platter
Some veg in tatters others seem fatter
Folks chitter chatter.. prefer the latter
Cumulus nimbus nimbly flitter & flutter
Sunrays grasp after a last gasp stutter
Sliding gliding riding wooden shutter
Rasp of uncouth din off a roof of tin
Staccato rinse & repeat beat does utter
Burgling drains & gurgling in the gutter
Huddles of puddles cuddle and splutter
Parched Earth’s skin softens like butter
Mother Nature's own homegrown nutter
Folks groan have to clear up soaked clutter
Mumble prone to moan but not a tut tutter
Mustn't grumble need the tumble they mutter
I am but a paltry pebble
washed upon the lakeshore.
A tumbled piece of agate.
Simply that and nothing more.
I am but a mere grain of sand
raised from the seabed floor,
sodden from an ocean wave.
Simply that and nothing more.
I am but an insignificant human,
a dinky speck of dust; an eyesore
fleetingly alive upon the Earth.
Simply that and nothing more.
Where heather hums in Atlantic rain,
old stones remember names;
the wind through gorse like whispered pain
keens low the exile’s flames.
A curlew cries above the bog,
its call a silver thread;
it stitches sky to sodden fog
where silent feet have bled.
O Sídhe stir beneath the hill,
in twilight’s hollow breath;
their music bends the human will
to dance with time and death.
Yet green endures through grief and
The past rises
grey and pink
amid rasping gravel
barnacled to chasms
sunken and sodden
clawing at hasty feet
that skate manically
and hurl bodies cruciform
onto mocking concrete.
The marred morn pauses
for a nanosecond
to ponder the maelstrom
of mangled flesh
and sirens.
2026-02-12 Write A Beautiful Carpe Diem Poem — Sponsored by Constance La France
I have a butcher’s at sunlight on skin,
warm, tremulous, yet coolly indifferent.
A sparrow scuttles across sodden turf;
its head inclined, inquisitive, keen—
I smile, imagining its quiet thought,
a tiny philosopher of morning light.
The wind threads through skeletal, bare branches,
stirring peat, drizzle, and smoke from hearths afar.
I inhale—letting it suffuse my lungs,
a private liturgy pressed to my heart.
Time traverses my fingers, soft at first,
like river water shaping unseen stone,
then quickens—sharp, insistent in its beat,
resonant within the hollows of my chest.
I taste the acerbic tang of fallen berries,
feel loam yield beneath soles and marrow deep,
and in this fractured, ephemeral morning,
I recognise the miracle not quite mine:
all of this—fleeting, exact, and unbidden—
asserts its plenitude; I am suffused.
The person who makes an app that translates
real-time thoughts into words on a screen
will change the creative process forever
… for good or ill
On the outside I sit outside in the dark silence
On the inside my bosom is clamorous with
Painterly disconnections of truth and grace
… I could go on
I could go on if I only had that app
For alas, the sodden night is dark and
I cannot strike my thoughts upon a page
… without parched light
This truth is as literal as it is metaphorical
For in the process of fetching parchment
My mind will corrupt these moments
… these raw moments
If the Rainman would concur, I would take all my days cloudy and
all my moments as this sodden one, but to my chagrin he does not.
Things come upon me near the moistened river. The water in the air
takes me back to a Styrofoam cup of juicy minnow bait on a drizzly day.
Countless coconuts swirl down this smelly tributary. They don’t
about each other or about why the tide takes them there it pleases.
You can’t tell me that they do not think like us, or maybe they don’t.
Either way they cannot know the sacredness of watching a ballet
of synchronized raindrops from beneath the water’s surface.
Submitted by Gary Baldwin (Jan 21, 2026)
for the Let it Rain Poetry Contest
Written: November 06, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Karen Jones
****************************
December can be a seraphic break ... not a trek through squalor—
No wheezy winds, no stygian moods ... no suction of sodden days,
Let it simmer with the warmth ... of rapture and rosemary stew.
Let the nimbus sky festoon the trees ... with blithesome skeuomorph snow—
Each flake is a serendipity whisper ... a spark of pure grace,
Let the river rime ripple ... as a rakish scarf on the hills.
Let the roost resound with stories ... sages, and escorts alike—
While the air sizzles with ... mellifluous sigh and a hint of lard,
Let the rugged year resile ... ratified by insight and treacle.
Let the vault of stars above ... be a tailored zenith of light —
A quixotic quilt stitched by ... Siamese dreams and slack-jawed awe,
Let bleak hours resile into ... symbiosis with joy, not scorn.
Allow the standard hush of snow ... to soften the slur of time —
And a slender sickle of hope ... scythes the stench of the past,
Let December be the soul of ... what we almost dared to believe.
December rains have dragged last, lingering leaves
down into litter. Sodden almond-casks
that once bore kernels, strewn discarded masks,
repose redundant. Thoughts are threadbare sleeves
devoid of comfort. Like a lonely cello,
the wind whips fitfully about its tasks.
A chaffinch flicks a fruitless shell, and asks:
the year must disappear to sere, to yellow?
Expecting legible patterns in dispersal,
she wishes worldwide winter worked for her,
have secret feelings yield the universal.
The nutshell, now inert, helps her infer
that life must die, but strangely, must prevail.
December’s just the belly of the whale.
This year autumn is the bugs busying the undergrowth hiding under sodden leaves. It is children playing with and collecting acorns that have scattered the ground sporadically as squirrel’s nourishment for the day. It is the rain that drenches the plants once dried up and wilting in the summer sun. It is the showers that leave the glimpse of a rainbow as if in a distant land. It is the rotting of apples unchosen for apple-pie that blustery night where the log-fire is once again alive.
I’m reminded that now it is autumn as I step into that muddy woodland. It is though someone has shaken the trees of their leaves, the earth an array of colours, nut brown, oranges and golden yellows. Yet, soon the season will pass just as a storm leaves just a breeze and we are left nostalgic for the time we spent in these nature-nurturing months.
Once foretelling portents swam within the
Apogee bath.
Torn wounds in flesh,
unequip the afflicted. Lack.
Unilaterality Undesirables systematically
inspect an overture unto the future.
Incisions.
Indecision.
Discussions.
Decision.
Resolution Found between
Thigh
and
Breast Fat.
We spoke on the old West.
Distain allowed to follow
in
shadows' shoes.
Walk-
from the gravestone tomb,
Talk-
from the cemetery plot.
prefer amnesia, anesthesia, or euthanasia,
the lot.
Apposed to this undying pain,
grief,
return of
disbelief.
A contrite
Sorry resentment
Sodden in maple
Solidity.
Solidarity pushed well past
comprise while
the unconvinced so
remained that,
a sacerdotal yet
antidotal dissenter.
Go on.
Permission to let Pessimism steep in dark tea leaves.
Reverse dove beneath the San Fernando crust.
Would it Have Ended Differently?
One
Raindrop falls,
Bare feet on stone.
Her silence, rain-soaked halls,
Prayers drift with the drizzle.
Candles flicker, uncertain, dim.
Her robe clings, damp against her skin,
Questions weep from the sodden silence.
If belief had bloomed, would she remain?
Or did her path always dissolve in rain?
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.