06-17-2026, 02:33 AM
@milo - I'll be offline for a week, but busily working on this with pencil and paper when I'm not driving. I had another one in the works that I thought had more potential (reworking a literary cliche) but a week's time for both.
Concerning the grammar trap(s), here's the facts: I have four (lethal) spring traps and one live-catch trap. He ate the bait from each of the spring traps and wouldn't enter the live-catch trap (baited or not). Which explains the use of singular vs. plural, but of course to the reader it looks wrong because he has no reason to know the traps and the trap are two different entities. Now, to finesse this without making the poem clunkier than it is...
Concerning the grammar trap(s), here's the facts: I have four (lethal) spring traps and one live-catch trap. He ate the bait from each of the spring traps and wouldn't enter the live-catch trap (baited or not). Which explains the use of singular vs. plural, but of course to the reader it looks wrong because he has no reason to know the traps and the trap are two different entities. Now, to finesse this without making the poem clunkier than it is...
Non-practicing atheist