Sunday Mini-Challenge - Ode to the Quotidian

Hey Toads!  

Manicddaily, Karin Gustafson here,to tell you that I don’t much believe in muses.  Or, maybe it’s truer to say that I have absolute faith in them.  

Meaning that I tend to think a muse, i.e. inspiration is here, there, everywhere, all the time, and any trouble I may have in locating her/him/it is due far more to my absence of attention than to any muse having gone missing. 

Meaning that I think there’s a poem (at least an ode) available in pretty much anything, if considered closely.  (Note that I personally am not always capable of this close consideration!) 

One of my favorite “od-ists” to just about anything is Pablo Neruda.  Neruda wrote three collections of odes; they cover topics from the quotidian to the sublime--or maybe he just makes the quotidian--that is, day-to-day stuff-- seem sublime.  One of my favorites is one of his most homely--”Ode to My Socks” in which he rhapsodizes about his heavenly socks as something he is tempted to feed like a pair of tropical birds, with seed and pink melon. 

So, in this mid-June, when, in the Northern hemisphere, you may not even be wearing socks (though you may be eating pink melon) and when, in the Southern hemisphere, you may have donned wool socks "as soft as rabbits," I ask you to think of something simple, something down to earth or day to day--what, for example, your eye passes over as you look over (right now) from your computer screen--and find a poem or ode in it. 

Note that the poem/ode can start with something relatively "lowly", but then scale whatever heights or fancies you wish.  In other words, your ode can, but, need need simply describe the object or experience that is its inspiration; it can just use object or experience as a place for lift-off (if you like).

If the quotidian doesn’t work for you, then feel free to focus upon the “ode” part of this project and keep to a more elevated plane right from the start.  I am thinking here of Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale or Ode on a Grecian Urn.  

Classic odes are lyrical, and may follow a traditional rhyme scheme.  Feel free to use a structured format, but do not feel obligated to do so. 

Also, I include below some photos/drawings of quotidian sorts of things--use as you like, but please do give appropriate attribution. (Karin Gustafson).  (BTW, the green vegetables are brussel sprouts on their stalk.)  

Finally, sorry to be a bit rushed--am preparing for my daughter's wedding this upcoming week (which will be at our house!)  A lot to do!  I will definitely visit everyone, but may be slow.