#497: Does a potato grow in coastal clime?

Some explanation is in order. Today’s prompt on the glorious NaPoWriMo website is to play with sound, particularly with rhyme. Additionally, the prompt comes with further instructions to find ten specific types of words to begin with, and then to create a bank of rhyming words for those initial ten. I want to create my own challenge by trying to incorporate all ten of those words and a healthy smattering of their rhyming counterparts into a sonnet. Now, typically, a sonnet is a rhyming poem. Mostly, in the sonnets I’ve written this month, I have jettisoned the rhyme until the closing couplet. So this is gonna be a rhyming extravaganza, but I’m going to try to keep my rhymes away from the end of the line–where rhymes typically, traditionally, and tediously go. And, I’ll try as well, in sonnet fashion, to write a ten syllable line. What follows is my preparatory work, if you’re interested. If not, feel free to skip ahead to the poem.

Ten Words (Five Senses, Three Concrete, Two Verbs)

1. Potato: tomato, alfredo, Toledo, allegro, grow 
2. Rose: nose, toes, throes, goes, bows, knows, chose 
3. Thistle: gristle, pistol, list a little, epistle 
4. Horn: born, torn, acorn, mourn, forlorn, borne, thorn
5. Moon: boon, goon, soon, loon, afternoon, noon, monsoon
6. Boat: goat, tote, smote, note 
7. Tree: bee, knee, tea, free, deity, felicity, see, sea
8. Dog: log, frog, bog, eggnog, smog, clog, fog
9. Swim: Annie Kim, slim, rim, dim, limb, gym, pseudonym, synonym
10. Walk: hawk, talk, balk, knock, caulk, bulwark, block, chalk cornstalk, laughing stock

Holy crap. This is gonna be hard. I first have to make some sense out of this random group of ten words. I should have chosen words that would naturally make sense together, but I didn’t, so there you have it. I could start over, but that would take too long. Maybe first, I can see if I can concoct a story of some sort for these words. Something like:

Walk through a rose garden by the single fir tree with a dog on the coast, avoiding thistles and thorns, horns honking in the distance from the highway, the moon visible in the day, out at sea, a boat, wonder if one could swim that far, wonder if potato would grow in this climate.

Does a potato grow in coastal clime?

Does a potato grow in coastal clime?
You walk your dog, talk to yourself, fog clears
and you see the moon up there above sea;
it’s afternoon. On the bank, your landmark
is that giant tree where you came down,
having chosen a rose in a bed of thistle,
having decided, escaping the smog
and the horns of highway 101,
to throw for the mutt the sticks you found
around that driftwood log. You list a little,
those thorns hurt, you’re torn, forlorn, and
you think potato–when you see the boat,
note that distance, who was it Kit or Kim
wondered how far William Stafford could swim?