Decided a few months ago to write poems about different kinds of giants. I got about three in and it petered out. But I'd like to keep it going. Maybe.
Giants #1: The Peikko
In Finland, do naughty children still
clasp hands over mouths
because the peikko will come
and bore holes in teeth?
It’s a giant if it wants, smaller or invisible if it likes,
sometimes centuries asleep, disguised as a rocky ridge
or tumbled boulders in a valley, motionless—
until its “stony sleep” is shattered
by naughty children, whose teeth suffer same.
I prefer the snowy sunlit ridge,
the sloping shadowed tree-strewn valley,
the ravishing beauty I assume in Finland;
but who am I to stay the hand and plead,
imagine that the peikko would relinquish its guilted pleasure?

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