Category Archives: daily prompt

Violets (a triolet)

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Sweet violets in the garden grow

in dappled shade and summer breeze.

Such vibrant beauty to behold! 

Sweet Violet’s in the garden. Grow

strong and wise and free and bold! 

May laughter always flow with ease.

Sweet! Violets in the garden grow

in dappled shade and summer breeze.

Day four of NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). The muses at NaPoWriMo.net have provided this prompt for the day:

Today, let’s try writing triolets. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB.

My poem today is also a celebration of my sweet granddaughter Violet’s second birthday. Happy birthday, pumpkin!

Reverse Engineering

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Passing Through the Lot on a Hot Day

Whose parking lot? I have no clue.
She probably lives in Timbuktu;
Security cams all turned on me,
She’ll see each car I’m prowling through.

Your big ‘ol mutt is onto me,
entering your car without a key.
Apart from dog drool, crushing heat; 
the brightest day you've ever seen.

Mutt jerks her leash, the collar breaks.
I know I’ve made a big mistake.
Her bark so loud, now sirens wail.
She pins me hard, there’s no escape.

The lot is filled; lights blue and red.
I alibi, cops shake their heads.
They haul me off, the jail’s close by.
I’ve made my bed, so here I’ll lie.

Day Three of National Poetry Writing Month! Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo.net:

Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. For example, you might turn “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to “I won’t contrast you with a winter’s night.” Your first draft of this kind of “opposite” poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry).

Okay, so maybe I didn’t quiiiiiiite follow the prompt, but I kinda did, in spirit at least.

The poem I chose to use is Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Here is Frost’s poem: 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost - 1874-1963

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

To see how others have responded to the challenge, go to NaPoWriMo.net and check out the comments section for links to other participating poets.

NaPoWriMo 2023: Day Two ~ Surreal

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Day Two of NaPoWriMo. 

Today’s prompt is inspired by poet Paul Celan, and asks us to:

“begin by picking 5-10 words from [a specified] list. Next, write out a question for each word that you’ve selected (e.g., what is [fog]?) Now for each question, write a one-line answer. Try to make the answer an image, and don’t worry about strict logic. These are surrealist answers, after all! After you’ve written out your series of questions and answers, place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page. See if you can make a poem of just the answers. You may find that what you have is very beautifully mysterious, and somehow has its own logic. Happy writing!”

The words I chose are: fog, clove, gutter, salt , thunder, ghost, acorn, elusive, and song (not in order of use). Nothing “beautifully mysterious” came of it, but an interesting challenge nonetheless. Herewith:

What Is…

A pig, a dentist and a cup of hot spiced wine.
[Sounds like the beginning of a bar joke];
that which climbs out of empty bottles.

The smell of old sheets, the color of forgotten.
Wrinkled memories calling bs.
What the dog seeks beneath the bed.

There is…
a giant underfoot,
looking straight, but seeing crooked,
[humming] mathematical paint splatters
hung on a fence to dry.

[Don’t turn around lest they be seen,]
pillars crying at being left behind.

April Showers Bring…

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Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873 

It’s April, and we all know what that means: NaPoWriMo!

It’s National Poetry Writing Month, and the well-versed souls at NaPoWriMo.net are once again supplying us with inspiration, motivation and creative prompts to help us in the challenge of writing a poem a day for the entire month of April. I always have the best intentions of meeting the challenge, but sometimes life happens. We’ll see how it goes this year.

For April 1:

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but they never said you can’t try to write a poem based on a book cover — and that’s your challenge for today! 

As a resource, we were sent to The Public Domain Review’s collection “The Art of Book Covers 1820-1914.”

I chose to use a cover to Jules Verne’s book From Earth to the Moon. My endeavor:

To the Moon

When first we breached primordial ooze, 
our lungs inflating from newfound air,
we turned skyward with clouded eyes, and
there it was:

a moon!

We grew a spine (well, some of us),
strengthened lengthening limbs,
climbed mountains and – 
finding our voice – we howled 

at the moon. 

Torsos stretched, gaining balance.
Minds stretched, gaining wherewithal.
Desires stirred beyond mere survival.
Straining upright, we reached yearningly to

touch the moon.

Stripped of innocence, we clothed our bodies.
Sloughing naivete, we cloaked our intentions.
Finding pride, we adorned our personhood.
Growing listless, we set a goal: we would walk

on the moon. 

Scarred and marred from our abuse, at a distance
Earth nonetheless appears a shiny bauble; a marble
expendable in our cosmic game, because we believe
if all else fails, we will simply move 

to the moon.

Forgettable

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NaPoWriMo Day Three. Today’s prompt:

“This one is a bit complex, so I saved it for a Sunday. It’s a Spanish form called a “glosa” – literally a poem that glosses, or explains, or in some way responds to another poem. The idea is to take a quatrain from a poem that you like, and then write a four-stanza poem that explains or responds to each line of the quatrain, with each of the quatrain’s four lines in turn forming the last line of each stanza. Traditionally, each stanza has ten lines, but don’t feel obligated to hold yourself to that! Here’s a nice summary of the glosa form to help you get started.”

Here goes:

“If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.“

from If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

If no memorial service is held for me

upon my timely (or otherwise) demise,

that is fine.

My preference is to be

memorable — hopefully in a good way–

rather than memorialized.

If I’m forgotten altogether, that is fine, too.

I’ll have forgotten you, if slowly as my mind dims, or

in the event of an unfortunate outcome,

if suddenly.

But why speak of death?

There are so many other ways

to be forgotten.

I am not ashamed to admit:

I forget most people, places, and

happenstances that come my way,

so it is only fair–

if fairness is a thing–

that once our paths diverge,

you forget me.

Thinking out loud now,

though you’re not here to hear me,

perhaps it’s best to be forgotten.

Life is not about me, after all.

Instead, please remember

all things living, plant and animal,

whose demise we can stay,

or at least delay.

Look for these opportunities.

Do not look for me.

So many of us have forgotten our way,

or even our why.

We have forgotten our humanity, our decency.

These things I will try to remember,

and perhaps by remembering them

and practicing humility and kindness,

I will indeed become memorable.

Regardless, when I’m gone, please

allow me to slip from your mind,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

Bird Talk

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Day Two NaPoWriMo prompt: Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. 

I used the tweet pictured below, which gave the words for the sounds certain birds make.

Herewith, my poem:

Oh, Dr. Seuss, you silly goose,

you loved to glacitate.

You wrote that owls go hoo hoo hoo.

In truth, they cucubate.

Your nonsense rhymes, those made-up words,

a lazy way to write.

So many real words just as fun,

and downright erudite.

A rooster doesn’t “cock-a-doodle do”

when he cucuriates.

And the hen’s response might well be “cluck,”

but — to rhyme — she glocidates.

Toward “wockets in pockets” I hold no grudge,

but to my ear, it grates;

like the striddly stry of a peacock’s cry

when it so poopity pupillates.

Plus One

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NaPoWriMo day one prompt: “The prompt is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, “A Story About the Body.” The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.”

Six weeks, it had been. Six weeks of “boot camp” at a CrossFit gym. The final day, a repeat of the first day’s timed workout. Only this time, preceded by a one-mile jog. My legs were spent. “Want me to go first?” my workout partner asked. I could use the recovery time, but she’d be tired, too. “No, I’ll go.” She’d track sets, count reps, cheer me on. I’d try to complete the workout before time ran out. Last time, I’d fallen short by nine burpees.

Sit ups, squats, I can’t recall what else. And those last ten burpees. It wasn’t pretty. Fling my body to the floor, a wobbly push-up, drag myself upright, jump and clap my hands above my head. Repeat. I was last of the whole class. Time running out. Everyone stood around me, cheering. “Keep going! You’ve got this!” Struggling to stand upright. Coach called “time.” One burpee short.

My workout partner moved close. Quietly, tentatively. “I think that was ten,” she offered. Our eyes locked. “I counted nine.” She nodded appreciatively and wrote down my final time. Plus one for the uncompleted burpee.

Six weeks. Nine burpees. I’ll take it.

Forevermore (or less)

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Love lasts forever.

Come to find out, forever

isn’t all that long.

Early bird post for April’s National / Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo).

The prompt: Write a poem based on, or responding to, a line of Emily Dickenson’s poetry. The line I chose was “Forever might be short.”

I hope to participate in the NaPoWriMo daily prompts for April again this year, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m one for one so far, and the month hasn’t even yet begun!

The Many Faces of Bold

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Bloganuary prompt: What does it mean to live boldly?

Nelly Bly, Library of Congress, public domain via WikiMedia Commons.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, photographer Steve Petteway, public domain via WikiMedia Commons
Rosa Parks, photographer unknown. Public domain via WikiMedia Commons.
Bette Midler, Library of Congress Life, Photo by Shawn Miller. CCO via Wikimedia Commons

Five Things

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Bloganuary prompt: What are five things you are grateful for today?

I am grateful that I woke up to a rosy sunrise,

And for the beauty of early morning frost

Oh, wait… time out!

I started this post yesterday, but then woke up this morning to rain. No problem; I’m grateful for today’s rain, and how it plays with reflections on my deck.

I’m grateful that most of my native plants survived the heat dome of last summer….

and I’m grateful that Mother Earth is better at growing sword ferns than I am.