Fun with Fables and Paint Chips

Hello friends. I hope everyone enjoyed last week’s ekphrastic poetry prompt. This week we’re moving into the F section of the poetry dictionary. There were several fun options that begin with F, but I had to narrow it down to one. I chose the first entry, which is the Fable. Sorry for the short delay in getting this posted today, but I didn’t get my poem done on Thursday and had to finish it this morning.

FABLE (Latin, “to speak”) A story, in verse or prose, that uses animal characters to point out a moral.

Aesop’s fables, from the Ancient Greek, tell stories such as the dog in the manger and the race between the tortoise and the hare. Jean de La Fontaine uses rhymed verse to tell his fables. The Br’er Rabbit stories, which derive from West Africa and were told originally by slaves in America, are also fables.

the poetry dictionary, page 99

The Challenge

Your challenge, if you’re up to it, is to write an original fable in verse. I’ll accept prose, if you must, but verse is so much more fun and challenging. In keeping with fable tradition, your poem should involve at least two animals and should illustrate a moral principle important to you. Maybe you want to show that lying is bad or that working industriously will yield good results.

The paint chip words and phrases that you have to work with for your fable are ghost, pins and needles, parchment, gauze, whirlpool, relish, and dawn. I’d like you to use at least four of the chips.

By the way, these are the last seven paint chips in the deck. Going forward they will all be repeats, though the collections will always be different than any we’ve seen to date. I’ve consistently put paint chips back into the box at the front, and so if I randomly select cards throughout the deck, we should have all different sets.

My Poem

Here is my fable about the dog and the weasel. It might be inspired by events in my own life, but it might not.

The Dog and the Weasel

Dependable Dog went to work each dawn
Offering her bona fide best.
Whether the job demanded brain or brawn
Until she finished Dog wouldn't rest.

Yearning to improve the product they sold
Dog found a parchment purveyor.
She told Weasel it was better than gold.
Weasel said Dog would get what she asked for.

Dog continued her daily grind waiting
On pins and needles for the upgrade.
Then came Weasel's edict,  I'm rethinking
The project I've once before weighed.

This same scenario played out again
And again until Dog lost hope.
Weasel relished his power-play so zen,
His promises a worn out trope.

Still Dog kept on working, doing her best,
For that's what dependable gives;
And when her time came her efforts were blessed.
Each day with her Maker she lives.

As for Weasel who welshed on vows galore,
I can't report that all went well.
New servants counted his lies and kept score.
Tales of unfairness they did tell.

His ghost roamed the earth, feeling thin like gauze,
Weasel's peace forever unseen.
Spinning in a whirlpool, pretense the cause,
While Dog roamed flowered fields of green.

The moral of the story: Be dependable and true even when faced with deceit and unfairness, and you’ll be rewarded for eternity.

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Your Turn

I can’t wait to read all the excellent fables you all will write. You can share you fable in the comments, or you can post it on your own blog and share a link in the comments. Be sure to invite your friends to come have fun with fables and paint chips too. Share a link to this prompt on your Facebook page or Twitter account. Wherever your friends and readers hang out. The more fables we write, the more moral wisdom we all will gain. And that can only be a good thing.