He thought he’d found
a cure for cabin fever.
Spring’s green was
just around the corner.
He’d waited all year,
cooped up and lonely;
staring at snowdrifts,
listening for the plow.
A little fresh air
might do him some good.
Or so he thought.
He hadn’t moved in hours.
He thought he’d finally
figured it out. But no.
It wasn’t really ice cream
after all, he thought.
It couldn’t be ice cream.
But wait. Either
it was ice cream
or he was just
thinking about ice cream.
One thing was certain:
there were far worse ways to go.
Okay, then.
Ice cream.
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Poets and Storytellers United
Scribble #9 ~ CONTAGION
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You put me inside his head … except, I can’t quite see the connection to contagion. Is he experiencing the results of having become ill? Or is he just coming out of quarantine?
Thanks for the query, Rosemary. Here’s the skinny: It was around 4AM when I spotted the prompt & went looking for something in my Works-In-Progress file that I might work on in response. I scanned for the word “fever” and found a VASTLY different, extremely pared-down version of this piece, which I pounded on for about an hour before posting. Cabin fever/Buried alive/hallucinating ice cream. It’s definitely going back into the W.I.P. File ASAP. It is, after all, just a Scribbling…
I think it’s a terrific poem! And that it can stand as it is for future reference, regardless of the prompt. I just didn’t get the connection to contagion, but that might have been my fault rather than yours. 🙂
Ice cream, even in cabin-fever weather, is always worth pursuing!
I can certainly see how the effects of cabin fever can spread. This particular speaker seems to be alone, but anyone who might’ve been with him would probably be touch by his sense of… blah. Soon, irritability would stick in its sharp fingers and after a while everyone will be screaming at one another, wanting to run out of the place (even if it’s freezing outside). Maybe this is the beginning of the contagion?
I hope he went for the ice cream.
Hopefully he had some of the really good ice cream on hand.
This is incredibly vivid. I can picture his lassitude and irritability.
I didnt get the contagion, since he was alone and the cabin fever kept him there. But i luv ice cream and didn’t realize i could luv ice cream poems as well, so bravo Ron
Much❤love
It reminded me of the book Holes, when Zero has a fever and Stanley encourages him to eat the only thing that’s available in an onion field, an onion, by telling him it’s an ice cream sundae.
I read this after finishing a couple scoops of Breyers. Coincidence?