Nature often comes up with some interesting shapes. Like this tree stump I spotted, in Blue Mounds State Park of Southwestern Minnesota, that looks like a little tree creature with bulging eyes. Naturally it tickled my Muse with the following result. It will become one of my Animated Still collection. Animated stills are poems where inanimate objects take on human, animal, or spirit forms, traits, or articles. They are derived from Photographs I have taken, that have moved me to write a poem associated with it.

This poem is comprised of 3 distinct poetic formats: a 5-7-5, a Diminishing Hexaverse, and a closing ABAB Rhymed Quatrain used as an envoi.

A 5-7-5 Poem is simple a poem where line one has 5 syllables, line two has 7 syllables, and line three has 5 syllables again. It need not rhyme, but I chose to mono-rhyme it.

A Diminishing Hexaverse is a poem that begins with a five-line stanza of five syllables in each line, then a four-line stanza with four syllables each, and so on, until the last one syllable stanza ends the poem.
The reducing line and syllable count is why the form is referred to as "diminishing." The term "Hexaverse" does not refer to syllable count as much as it does with a "Hex" or "spell" that causes the syllables to disappear with each new stanza. Thus, "poof" it's gone.

ABAB Rhymed Quatrain.
I chose a tight 5 syllable count Quatrain (4 lined stanza) with an abab rhyming scheme to close the poem.

This photograph was taken by the author himself.

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