Paul Brookes chose the Tautogram for us to explore last week.

I didn’t like this form much, far too exclusive. I think I have quite a rich vocabulary, but this was a struggle. Pick any letter and there will be plenty of nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives that begin with it, but, unless you pick ‘t’, virtually no articles, conjunctions, prepositions or pronouns, and phrases need those too. Still, struggle or not, I’ve set myself the challenge of writing one of these for each letter of the alphabet, except the silly ones. Here is ‘s’ to begin with.

Sleep

Sleep settles,
soft sand sifting,
shifting sea-green, sea-blue, sea-purple swell,
salt-scented.
Sleep searches
submerged ship-dreams,
sheet-metaled, silver-plated scavenged stars,
sinking slowly seawards.
Somnus sips
subterranean silence.

Sea

Sea serpent stirs
subterranean sous-sols,
stony-eyed, sea-wracked,
sifting shipwrecks,
squirming, squid-infested,
scattering silver-glinting,
sequin-stitched, seraph-fish,
singing storm songs.

Stars

Stars stretch,
sky-filling,
sea-reflected shimmerings,