So this month’s poetry prompts have come to me late at night. Normally I collect lines throughout the day and see what I can string together when my friend finally pushes the prompt into the light. He was still writing his poem very late and I was tired, but he gave me a hint: a mule that lost its shoe.

What? No really, what? He wanted me to write about a donkey?

As it happened that day, I had not written any lines because I was at work and tending to things after so I had to go into it cold, not that anything I would have gathered could have prepared me for the prompt. I went to sleep and my body woke at the same time it does for work, but without the alarm. Half asleep, the poem came to me. I can’t guarantee it is worth much, but I wrote a poem with a donkey. I did it. That bastard!

Sound the Alarm (5:32 am)

The journey we are on is long
and ensconced in the pages of books, 
their history just dreams that seed 
fantasies we are unable 
to cleanly separate in time. 

I am the Sanchez to your Quixote, 
following your moves across the landscape 
on a donkey named Dapple. 
Adding light to the path as well as laughter. 

At times my steed disappears, 
much like my meaning in this world 
and reappears without a shoe 

as we limp along together 
in our lameness, unashamed.