Happy Tuesday to All and Welcome to Poetics! Lisa here as your pub host, offerer of liquid refreshment, tasty snacks from the magic cupboard, and provider of today’s Poetics Prompt.

While shuffling through my synapses for an idea for the prompt, I see that 2024 is not only the year for the Chinese Zodiac Wood Dragon, it is also Leap Day on the 29th, which makes it a Leap Year. The only (some-would-say antiquated) tradition I think of with Leap Year is that women can ask men to marry them; however there are other traditions regarding it that are practiced around the world. Click here to see more of them.

Searching through dVerse’ archives I came across an Open Link Night (#33) by Joy Ann Jones (aka hedgewitch) on February 28, 2012 that talks about it. The 164 poems inspired by the post tells me Leap Year is good poetry fodder.

After almost having this written, I looked to see if leap was ever used as a quadrille word and yes, it was, by Grace with Q #47 on January 1, 2018, with 50 poems generated. Leap’s not too shabby by itself.

We can call the leap with poetry “the assistance of our Muse.” We can have epiphanies with and/or without poetry in mind. Earlier this month De Jackson’s (aka Whimsygizmo’s) prompt was both for me, a Muse who inspired an epiphany with her word, touch. It inspired a poem about how all-that-is, as we know it, are infinitely recycled touching atoms. That same night I dreamed – a dreambyte, really – a message: we are the sensory receptors for a larger organism. Some might think that’s a little woo-woo, but now I’m thinking about it. Maybe call it a quantum leap?

The following are excerpts from some damfine poems.  Click on the titles to read the whole poems.

Now if these next lines don’t get your wonder woo-woo radar going, I don’t know what will. It makes me want to know more! From Roberta Hill Whiteman’s Leap in the Dark:

Stoplights edged the licorice street with ribbon,
neon embroidering wet sidewalks. She turned
into the driveway and leaped in the dark. A blackbird
perched on the bouncing twig of a maple, heard…

Life can carry on with shadowed places, events, entrenchments, with no seeming end, and then… From Juan Felipe Herrera’s, We Are Remarkably Loud Not Masked:

…because of you     you
we march touch hands lean back leap forth
against the melancholy face of tanks & militia    we move
                                                             walk become
we become           somehow…

I couldn’t resist this homage to Robert Frost with a twist, Jennifer Michael Hecht’s, Not Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening:

…he found himself lost in a dark woods. I discovered myself
in a somber forest. In between my breasts and breaths I got
lost. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I’ve got promises
to keep, smiles to go before I leap. I’m going into the woods…

Leaping is certainly not all gloom, doom, or challenge to courage. Think of a ballerina leaping with Angela Jackson’s, Angelhair. Beware, the end of the poem — if you follow the link and read the whole thing — will see tears leaping from your eyes.

...I (who’s she) had a manner
of leaping toward a light
suddenly running into ecstasy
or heat, exquisitely blind
in the body racing inside it-
self. A little fit of imagining…

And now we’ve come to the place where I give you some choices to write about. Please choose one (or all) of the following to write a poem with:

1) Use the word or concept of leaping in your poem;
2) Travel to magneticpoetry (or some other random word generator.) Let The Muse inspire your poem with what she gives you.
3) Use the top image and write an ekphrastic poem to it. (top image link)

There are no form, rhyme, or subject constraints in this prompt challenge. All I ask is that you have fun with it!

If you are new, here’s how to join in:
• Post your piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog or web site) in the Mister Linky site.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy
• Please read and comment on other poets’ work–we all come here to have our poems read.

Please note: the Poetics Tuesday Mr. Linky is open to link up to until the Thursday prompt opens.