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"Giants" poem

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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