Orion’s Armament


Orionurania

Orion’s Armament

bistoury hidden in
baldric of tanned cow leather.
malchus sharpend deftly by
acutiator. always
armisonant; on his heels.
roundhead most efficacious.
sword positioned at his hip.

*****************

Written for:

Imaginary Gardens

 Mini-Challenge for Sunday – It’s written in the stars…

Also Posted on: PurpleTreehouse Poetic Forms Week 6: Back to Basics

Where we were asked to write “Stellar Verse” specifically about the constellation ORION. The simplest for of Orion consists of seven stars (without the Hunter’s shield and club.) The poem had to be 7 lines which had to begin with the initial letter of the names of the 7 stars working in sequence from the celestial zenith, ie, B, B, M, A, A, R, S and each line in the “pure” form of the Orion, must have seven syllables, but flexibility is allowed. There is no set rhyme scheme.

The actual names of the stars from which the letter sequence above has been generated are: Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak, Rigel, Saiph.

Since Orion is a hunter/warrior, I chose weapon words, some of which you might not understand (I didn’t know over half of these) so I am giving you the definitions:
acutiator – person in the Middle Ages who attended armies and knights to sharpen their instruments of war

armisonant – rustling in arms; resounding with arms

baldric – belt worn over one shoulder that is typically used to carry a sword

bistoury – surgical instrument for making incisions

malchus – short sword with a broad tapering blade

roundhead – weapon used as a club

About zongrik

For those of you who do not know the handle "zongrik," that would be Bat-Ami Gordin. Most people call me "Tammy." Bat-Ami means "daughter of my nation" in Hebrew. It's a heavy name to carry around. I answer to either name. I also answer to "mama." Some Basic Things about me: Animal lover, mom, poet/writer, dramatic soprano, photographer, teacher/tutor, CERT/Technician and, oh yeah, aerospace engineer. I consider myself "The Astro-Poet." To learn more about the origins of the word "zongrik" see whats-a-zongrik?

Posted on November 13, 2011, in imaginary garden with real toads, Poetry, The Purple Treehouse and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.

  1. I really enjoyed learning this vocabulary! Well done — so fittingly written!

  2. Wow, great words. “Baldric” and “malchus” might come in handy for Scrabble.
    But I digress.
    Excellent poem. That’s what I meant to say.

    Kay, Alberta, Canada
    An Unfittie’s Guide to Adventurous Travel

  3. Great poem and words,allways cool to learn something from these.

  4. Aloha dude! I’ve just stopped by to say thanks for this nice resource! Keep posting that way.

  5. So glad you shared this, Bat-Ami, and the myth behind the constellation. Thanks, too, for the process notes!

  6. Very clever use of words. An enjoyable read.
    The Lonely Recluse.

  7. wow nicely done!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: