A blog about children's writing and connecting with poets again.
Today’s prompt was to write a poem about love or not loving. It is a tricky subject. How do you write without sounding sappy or vindictive? So many pitfalls in this subject, and yet, it is so important to all of us. I decided to avoid the awkwardness by writing about a dog’s love instead. This is a Cinquain poem. The lines have a specific number of syllables. 2,4,6,8,2
A DOG’S LOVE
Listen…
footsteps approach
head lifts slightly, eyes wide
old bones follow, to settle at
his feet.
It’s funny that all these prompts are not setting me up for children’s poetry. I think I need to focus my attention more in that direction. But still, having a poetic way to think about what is happening in my life is fruitful, like writing in a diary to think about another day.
Today’s prompt (writer’s digest PAD) is tense. “It could be past tense, present tense, and/or future tense. Or it could be about a tense feeling. Or the tension in an object (like the strings of a guitar).”
TENSE CONVERSATIONS
Why am I here? she asks
and my body stiffens
reaching through my mind to find
an answer that alzhiemer’s
can understand.
I don’t understand
why memories are stolen
so suddenly
asked and answered
but never recalled.
But this time
I just say
because we love you.
I’m not sure about this poem, but it is a draft so it can always be changed. I wanted to write something about the Hands Off protests. Five million people marched in every state in the U.S. This isn’t just a blue state reaction to President Trump. These are people from every part of the country saying STOP. What is happening to our laws, our liberties, our jobs and our money is too much. If this doesn’t bring about a reaction from the President, I hope we do it all over again. This time with ten million people.
ALL IN A DAY
He makes his sign
and holds it high,
joining five million
who cry
Hands Off
my constitution,
while his granddaughter
studies heros,
like Cesar Chavez,
who changed the world
through pickets
and nonviolence,
as people disappear
for something they wrote
in a school newspaper
two years past.
This is a new format for me. A spanish form of poetry that uses lines of syllables 3,5,3,3,7,5. Working to a form is such fun. It takes away the pressure of what will I write and replaces it with how, which is much easier to figure out. The prompt today (writer’s digest PAD) was “After—” Using this as the title of the poem.
AFTER THEY ARE DONE
After the
construction is done
I wonder
how long it
will take for my ears to stop
hearing the hammers.
Mess. I’ve dealt with that my whole life. There’s always too much to do and not enough time to finish up the cleaning, sorting and organizing. Though I guess it’s really a matter of priority. I’d rather read a book than do the dishes, or texturize a wall than put away the clean clothes. And I need to make birthday presents because, well, they’ve got to be better than what I’d find in a store.
But there are good things about messes too. We used to play with the kids, throwing them into the ever growing pile of clean laundry, like a cannonball shot from the bed. Or the fearlessness of letting the kids have a mud fight in a summer’s rain, or flour wars in the days before paintball. Messes are fun as well as annoying. I guess I prefer more fun.
MESS
Most days
my life
is scattered about
in fits and starts,
memories and promises,
forgetfulness
and exhaustion.
It’s only a mess
when company comes.
Coincidentally, today’s Writer’s Digest Poem-A-Day prompt was to do a short poem. One of their examples was the tricube. How odd that it is suddenly a popular prompt across the blogs. The host mentioned “Also, wasn’t thinking about the stock market when I made my list of prompts, but hey, maybe there’s a poetic stock broker up to the challenge.” I’m not a stock broker, but decided to take on the challenge any way.
Reacting
to panic
and dismay
stock markets
sink lower
day by day
as tariffs
just add to
disarray
At Reflections on the Teche blog, I wrote a tricube poem. This form is 3 stanzas of 3 lines with 3 syllables each. It was inspired by a mural she posted, writing a short poem for Spring. I love working in forms. It’s a challenge, like doing a crossword or a sudoku, and gives your that drop of dopamine to have completed it. The mural was a painting of giant, bright flowers filling a wall.
Arms open
We greet Spring
With a smile.
Welcoming
Visitors
One and all
To join us
in color
and in dance.
I am also so pleased to be part of the Kidlit Progressive Poem, where each day in April, one person adds a line to a poem. Check out these sites in order to see the poem progressing each day. I will be the second to the end, on April 29th.
March 6, 2025 by margaretsmn
Please sign up to add a line to the Kidlit Progressive Poem coming April, 2025. On your chosen day, you will copy and paste the previous lines of the poem to a blog post and add your own line. When you sign up, create a hyperlink to your home page. For example, Margaret at Reflections on the Teche. Thanks!
April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/
April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog
April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at TanitasDavis.com
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors
Writer’s Digest, Poem-a-Day, Day 2. The prompt was to look around and pick something to write about that you see. This poem might fit better into a formal format, and perhaps I will try that. But the fun of poem-a-day is to write off the cuff, creating a draft of a moment in time.
FROM WHERE I SIT
My passport application
is ready to mail,
necessitated now
as my child has moved
to Canada,
chased away,
by a government in disarray.
Afraid for their life
and their liberty,
they flourish in foreign lands
while I sit home
wringing my hands over
what we’ve become.
The America that I loved.
I imagined falling into poetry month like falling into a soft marshmallow bed of comfort and delight. Wrong.
I seem to have anticipated so much that I stifled creativity. The first prompt of the month is from a tale of two cities, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And for me, it was both. I wanted to write. I leaped out of bed in excitement over starting this April journey. And as I sat in front of the prompt, I died. Nothing came to me, even after reading the 30 or so poems of others before me this morning.
Eventually, I remembered an old poem from my verse novel that seemed to be both great joy, and sudden devastation. So I adapted that poem to start this journey. Here is today’s entry.
CALLIGRAPHY
My grandmother moves my puppet hand
in vertical strokes,
like rows of bamboo on a mountainside,
straight and strong—
then sweeps the brush in horizontals
like a rabbit racing towards its hole at dusk.
Now you, Grandma says,
leaving me to practice
my calligraphy.
But my hand no longer remembers
without her strings.
It wiggles and wobbles across the paper
as if my bones were jelly.
My cat leaps onto the table,
perhaps to give me comfort
or more likely, to guarantee she doesn’t miss out
on new opportunities.
She washes her fur,
head bobbing as if keeping beat
to her favorite song.
My hand follows her rhythm
rising and falling across the page.
And suddenly,
my world is in harmony.
My lines are perfect.
Until she stretches.
Midnight cascades across the rice paper.
I grab fistfuls of tissues
to mop up the spreading ink
but blackness explodes
onto everything I touch.
The cat disappears
as quickly as she arrived,
and I am left alone
with my nightmare.
The banging and hammering are beginning to get to me. Although I am thrilled that the construction is underway, the noise can sometimes be overwhelming. Today my mind is as gray as the fog outside my window. It is hard to get things done as I wade through its thickness.
CONSTRUCTION
Hammering, sawing,
the song of a radio
that keeps the construction crew
focused,
the dishwasher, the exerciser
my husband on the phone.
From every direction
I am bombarded with noise.
I’ve a million things to do
but everything seems stifled,
blocked by the intrusion
on my eardrums.
So I leave it all behind me
and go cut my hair.
That was not on my list.
But it gave me back
a tiny moment of control
if not
quiet.
Starting Again in Poetry 