July Challenge and Alien Artifacts

Jillys2016 offered a July Challenge for collaborative poetry.  One poet writes the first half of a poem and then another poet finishes it.  My four line poem “Home Tour” may be used for this challenge.  Pretend it is supposed to be an eight line poem and write the second half.

Here I try to complete Charley’s first half.  Charley’s part is in bold red.  It is a quadrille, a poem of 44 words.  He provided the first 22 words.  I have to add the next 22 words of the poem.

The bird broke
my concentration
when he pecked
the door.

“Anatomy of Melancholy”
from my fingers fell.

Closed, it hit the floor.

The bird came in.
He said, “Lenore.”

I said, “What?”


“Never mind?”


I boot¹ the bird
and shut the door.

¹Some may argue that what I should have written is “I shoot the bird”, because it sounds better and that is what they would have done, but I will refrain from comment.

Photo: “Ever Growing” by the author linked to K’lee and Dale‘s Cosmic Photo Challenge on the topic of alien artifacts. I am hoping the pots will serve as alien artifacts where we are the invaders and plants are seeing if they can make use of our advanced technology.