This was the toughest Finishline challenge so far. The image was OK but not great–it wasn’t conveying an Eon except vaguely. And the acrostic demanded 2/3 of unfinished sonnet to be done, to cleave to iambic parameter, and to make at least a little sense. And it was about 4:40PM, and I only had till midnight. And I was falling-asleep exhausted.

So I did a crazy thing. I looked at what I’d done, really gazed at it, and then I took a nap.

And in the nap I had a weird dream. My high school sweetheart, whom I haven’t seen nor spoken to this century, was offstage in the dream, but in some structure and creating something with chalk. Something expressive. And some of that chalk came my way and I began to practice with it–it was tricky stuff.

I woke up. Used the bathroom, washed my hands. And somehow, with little forethought whatsoever, I attacked the completion of the drawing like a house afire. It was like I was handed a ten-pound set of keys. Bright light with an infinity symbol in it somehow becomes Eon. The pig’s ear calls for attention. The letters beg for articulation. The poem’s meaning is cracked open by bookending the lines of species with an ending that throws a million years at OUR species. And here we are, 10:10 PM.

pig/pigeon/eon

profusive species of the universe
perform and propagate and turn a phrase
perhaps a porpoise has a calf to nurse
percussive pelicans may stop and gaze

perverse Corruption plays a 6-deck shoe
permuting variations of your foe
inadequacies get your poor goat too
ineffability guides Silence so

if searching Truth we get a merry chase
o it’s enough to vex Bartolomeo
in finding sadness we do wet our face
o it can be like Vincent’s brother Theo

give us a million years, and in the main
good future kinfolk MAY have cured our Pain