Hello, here is Björn

Let me start with this:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down

Taken from The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien. For those of you who don’t remember this the last riddle of Gollum when he played the deadly game with Bilbo the hobbit.

This little vers is a riddle and the answer to the riddle is time. Samuel Peralta covered this prompt in September 2013 by telling of the riddles in terms of the myth of the Sphinx. The idea of making poems into riddles into verse is a very old one, and many of you may even have played with this before.

In Sweden we have for instance a tradition of putting a verse on Christmas packages, making the opening of the gifts a game where you are invited to guess the content of the package using the verse.

The riddles can be as hard or as easy as we want but here are a few things you may want to use,

Use personification for abstract or innate objects can be very effective
Describe the object using metaphors can also be fun
You may also try to describe the object without naming it (or him/her)

I recommend to keep the poem short, but there is no restrictions on how you write them. This is the poem I wrote myself:

A death in plenitude and joy
a trip through colors into grey
you go from bashful, turning coy
as night take over from the day

A silence under shining stars
a wait in front of fireplace
in prison of translucent bars
the sun is absent from our space

A waking up from sleep like death
returning wanderers from south
and all around in verdant breath
a taste of nectar from your mouth

An endless song in laziness
and dancing days with feet that’s bare
with love we walk in happiness
a smell of roses in your hair

And once again we have returned
it is the same but still it’s not
you take us forward as we turn
with every twist you wisdom brought

I thought this was extremely simple but it turned out it was hard for people to guess. The answer is a year, passing throught the seasons.

If you want to turn it into a game of sorts you may, but remember we are not like the Sphinx or Gollum who would devour you for a wrong answer. You may also give the answer directly and explaining your thought process.

When you have written your poem and posted it to your blog, just link up using Mr Linky below. Leave a comment below and then read and comment (or guess) on the other offerings you may find here.