Sunday Scribblings: Big Dreams

Someone took a crayon
and colored the tree limbs
white

then placed cotton batting
on all the roofs,

covered the telephone wires
with toothpaste

and dressed the sky
in a gray fleece.

I close my eyes
and see our home in Florida.

I'm sitting on the porch
writing this poem

as the rising sun washes
over my feet

and inches up my legs.
I open my eyes,

see chunks of snow
beginning to fall

from tree limbs,
put on my jacket

grab a shovel,
and start clearing a path.

3WW: Generate, Meager, Tease

Meager snow outlines
the roofs, trees, and bare ski slopes~
Don’t tease, generate!
A SNOWBOARDER STARES OUT THE WINDOW AT TINY FLAKES
Don’t tease, generate
snow for the dwindling halfpipe.
Out, out meager snow!

Poetry Train: Block Four

This is not about...

the watermelon-
colored leaves
I see outside
my classroom
window

or the lavender
weeds
or the white
birch trees
hidden

by the brush.
Instead, it's
about the sun
shining
on students

as they write
bent over
white paper.
This poem
is about them:

Anthony
Andrea
Ashley
James
Jeremiah
Krysten
Katie
Kris
Mariah
Makayla
Shelly
& Spencer.

3WW: Occur, Ragged, Tidy

Ragged winter trees.

Brushes tidying the sky.

When will spring occur?

ReadWritePoem Wordle: Red and Lubricious

I can't believe it's been a couple of weeks since I posted a poem.  I have no excuse except for life getting in the way.  I've been writing with my students at school but none of them were post-worthy.

ReadWritePoem is featuring a wordle for this week's prompt.  I chose a couple words (red and lubricious) and wrote the following about a little thing that happened over the weekend.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Valentine's Day morning
I found my husband
waiting for me
with our granddaughter
in the lobby
of the Holiday Inn
By the Bay
in Portland, Maine.

He was sitting,
sipping coffee,
chatting with Kylie.

Next to him
sat a man
holding red roses,
also waiting.

I walked up and my husband said,
"Oh, by the way,
Happy Valentine's Day."
And I replied, "Thanks,
Happy Valentine's Day
to you, too...

by the way."
We laughed.
The man looked
at his flowers.

Later that night
lying in bed
watching the Olympics
instead of entertaining
lubricious thoughts,
I heard him chuckle.
"What?" I asked.
"By the way," he said.

We turned the TV off.

ReadWritePoem Mini Challenge #3

Neruda wrote lovingly and hauntingly about his home.  I picked lines from quite a few of his poems in Absence and Presence and tried to find house connections.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Stone, nails, planks, tiles, all.
I built the house
of cement, iron, glass.

In my house, I have gathered together
curtains,
useless
objects,
bread, wine, stew,
hyacinths,
the curve of shoes,
spectacles,
brooms,
time.

I may move in and out of windows.
I seem to be alone and not alone.

Here, I shall be both lost and found.

ReadWritePoem Mini Challenge #2

From Absence and Presence.  A cento patchworked together from lines from Pablo Neruda's poems.
- - - - - - - - - -

Look here, look for me here
I must feel the crash of the hard water.
I let my hands fall to the sea

for that is the place of joy.
Where the sea is concerned, I am
the ocean overflowing from its bottomless cup.

I have salty experience.
I am one who keeps turning out dreams,
dreams like a sea-green girl

to learn to return from such depths.
I need the sea because it teaches me~
the university of the waves.

ReadWritePoem Mini Challenge #1

ReadWritePoem's mini challenge asks us to fall in love with a poet and write a series of centos (patchwork poems) using various lines from his or her work.

When I got to school this morning, I perused my poetry bookcase and my eyes were drawn to Pablo Neruda's Absence and Presence.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


If I die, survive me with such sheer force

that I, lifeless, will see you living,

your lips still sweet, still wet,

that beneath all that sadness

little by little the creepers

will send fresh shoots

that of my own brief life.