Lumber Dog

He winds through the wind broken woods
a wagging wanderer, leaping,
like lumberjack in a Canadian tuxedo
splitting the space on all fours
legs of two-by-fours, kilned hard,
He searches the timber tall and fallen
like a beaver doing dam work
skids out a snag like a tracked Cat blowing diesel
with turning haunches, hauls sticks, branches into
the dry den of his forest playpen
He is like the last winter squirrel flying
under the canopies seeking acorns — shucking
a stick, gingerly gripped and stripped, a last meal
He holds a rotting stump with digitile dexterity
a river otter cracking snails to gorge
his canines an axe splintering even sawdust
He is Paul Bunyan and Babe all in one coat
a deciduous legend that sprints the land.

∞

Submitted as part of “National/Global Poetry Writing Month” (#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo).

Today’s prompt: Day Twenty-Six: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that contains at least one of a different kind of simile – an epic simile. Also known as Homeric similes, these are basically extended similes that develop over multiple lines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have mainly been used in epic poems, typically as decorative elements that emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject (see, by way of illustration, this example from Milton’s Paradise Lost). But you could write a complete poem that is just one lengthy, epic simile, relying on the surprising comparison of unlike things to carry the poem across. And if you’re feeling especially cheeky, you could even write a poem in which the epic simile spends lines heroically and dramatically describing something that turns out to be quite prosaic. Whatever you decide to compare, I hope you have fun extending your simile(s) to epic lengths.”