Day 15 Prompt: Write a tradeoff poem.  Swap.  Exchange.

I’ll trade you the crumbling stone wall with a little green snake
for your treeful of orange birds.  My crescent moon seashell
for your sycamore branch shaped like a flying fish.

Will you swap my word scalawag for your flibbertigibbet?
Your dream of a journey through underwater caves
for mine of flying over the green mountains
with a flock of a thousand white birds?

I have always admired that way you have, of making people laugh
by raising your eyebrows just so.  You could have your pick
of my peccadilloes for that one.  Take two or three.

Though I am loathe to part from it, you would be welcome
to the view looking east over hills to my River, if I could have
your big lonesome prairie and marsh.  For just a little while, at least.

I’d take your bucket of tears for just a little while
if you’d hold on to this bundle of rage.  You could keep
the hearth with crackling fire if I could have the gypsy wind.

How about I give you a poem for every apple you share?
If you’re not using that magic wand, I’ll trade it to you for my broom.
And if you have a little extra motivation, I’ll take it
for an old morale boost I have lying around somewhere.

     This is my favorite way to work a poem, to pile up apparently unrelated images and words into a loose structure, and let the meaning arise out of their juxtaposition.  I wouldn’t call myself an Imagist, really, because I do intend for the final structure to gather some sort of meaning or import or weight, but I like when a poem comes together by the sewing together of images.