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***Announcement***
Please join us at dVerse LIVE with Sanaa on Saturday, November 22, from 10 to 11 AM EST. Come sit in on our LIVE (video and audio) session. We welcome everyone to read aloud a poem of your choosing, join in the informal conversation OR simply sit in and listen. We’re a friendly bunch…..the more the merrier! Hope to see you Saturday! Look for the link to join at Thursday’s OpenLinkNight prompt.

Hello to All who are gathered here today in the dVerse Universe, a place of pubtalk and poetry. I am your host, Lisa, ready to serve drinks and snacks from the magic cupboard. This Monday is where You and Your Muse are prompted to write a Quadrille. The name for the quadrille form is taken from an 18th Century dance, but as you may know, it is also dVerse’ poetic form of just 44 words (not counting the title) and includes one word the host (me) provides to you.

I’ve been holding onto this word for awhile and am glad to finally get to spring it on you. In a weird bit of synchronicity I was listening to two DJ’s talking on the radio yesterday and they were giving opinions on a listener’s question. One DJ said, paraphrasing, coaxing someone to do something is one thing. Coercion is another. Two words and methods that sound and seem so similar, but they are different.

Coax may be used as an intransitive verb (persuade, caress/fondle, adjust towards a certain direction;) a noun (simpleton; a dupe;) a transitive verb (to persuade by gentle, insinuating courtesy;) and as a verb (to tease or wheedle.) It feels a little more than suggestion and a little less than coercion. Who has not tried to coax the sun from the clouds? Or coaxed the clouds to bring respite from a blazing sun? There is something about the word that I like. It feels a bit naughty to me.

I found four grand poems using the word coax.

Nuit Blanche
By Amy Lowell
I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,   
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring   
To fit my mood, it is so weary white   
I have no wish for doing any thing.

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;   
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences   
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.

Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by   
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet   
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet

And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.   
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.   
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,   
Running long fingers down its shining flank.

A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown—
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass—pass.

Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.



The Dipper
By Kathleen Jamie
It was winter, near freezing,
I’d walked through a forest of firs
when I saw issue out of the waterfall
a solitary bird.

It lit on a damp rock,
and, as water swept stupidly on,
wrung from its own throat
supple, undammable song.

It isn’t mine to give.
I can’t coax this bird to my hand
that knows the depth of the river
yet sings of it on land.

My Date with Glenn Gould
By Jim Cory
What god does he
pray to, swaying
like that, muttering
orange chords
at the clouds
drifting by
inside his head?
 
Oh, to be his
bow tie, carelessly
pulled in place,
or to perch on the rim
or an ear, hearing
birds flirt
from their boughs.
 
Forests of notes
coaxed from
between bow staves:
we get lost
in them, stopping now & then
to picnic on crumbs
of Beethoven's skull.
 
At the end of the night
he vanishes
as sound sculpted
in air, decaying into
what was there
before before was.

Whenever you see a tree
By Padma Venkatraman

Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to coax it
to swell and burst its hard shell so it could send slender roots
to clutch at grains of soil and let tender shoots reach toward the sun
Think how many decades or centuries it thickened and climbed and grew
taller and deeper never knowing if it would find enough water or light
or when conditions would be right so it could keep on spreading leaves
adding blossoms and dancing
Next time
you see
a tree
think
how
much
hope
it holds

Once again, we have come to the place where you put your proverbial pen to paper and warm it with your poetic spirit’s will in words.

• Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word coax.
• Post your Quadrille piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts!
• Have fun (but only if you want to!)

Mr. Linky will remain open until Thursday November 20 at 3pm NYT.