Words Count With Mama Zen

 "None of us could breathe; somewhere under those bushes was the rest of Ray Brower. The train had knocked Ray Brower out of his Keds the same way it had knocked the life out of his body. The kid wasn't sick; the kid wasn't sleeping; the kid was dead."

--- from the movie Stand by Me

---based on the novella The Body by Stephen King

A child knocked right out of his tennis shoes . . . gut twisting image, isn't it?  Stephen King apparently thinks so.  That image plays a significant role in at least two of his stories (The Body, Pet Sematary).  And, Keds?  Those iconic shoes of childhood, vulnerability, and innocence appear dozens and dozens of times.  For King, these are power images.

A power image is an image that a writer returns to time after time.  It's part art, part personal mythology, and part creative shorthand.  It's a thing, a sound, an angle of light; it's anything that a writer imbues with a greater meaning than it would ordinarily have and adopts as a signature symbol.  Used well, a power image will . . . well, knock you right out of your Keds.

So, what about you, poet?  What's your power image?  What sort of symbols do you find yourself returning to again and again?  Show us . . . in twenty-five words or less.

Bonus Round!  Think of some of your favorite Toad poets.  Is there some sort of image that you associate with a particular poet?  Do tell!