Hello, and welcome! This is 15 Words or Less Poems, a low-pressure way to wake up your poetry brain (guidelines here), and I’m very glad you’re here.
Here’s another pic from our trip to Cyprus. Larnaca has a couple of salt lakes. They’re near the coast, and from the airplane, you could see how it’s probably ocean water that got cut off eventually by sandbars or land forming around them. They’re very close the the Mediterranean Sea. Anyway, all the rocks are covered with this shell of crunchy white salt. When you walk, you just hear crunch, crunch. Apparently people go and gather salt there at certain times of year to use in their homes.
This image makes me think of several things:
- Gulliver’s Travels (looks like there are tiny people running around on the sand!)
- bicycling on the moon
- cloning bicycles
And here’s my first draft. I actually had a thought of writing a poem using different bike-related words, like wheels, and spoke, and brake, and tired. Hehe. But it didn’t come quickly enough, and this is a fast first-draft challenge, so I moved on to something different.
It’s your turn! Have fun and stick to 15 WORDS OR LESS! (Title doesn’t count toward word count.)
38 Responses
“six skips into fall” Excellent!
I thought it looked like the setting of a dystopian novel–though how bikes would be still standing after some cataclysmic event I don’t know!
Bikes
a sign
that human souls
once loved this land
soon too they’ll rust and rot
Yes! I look at this photo and see so many different possible moods, and your poem captures one of those exactly–a bittersweet feeling of emptiness and loss. (And maybe bikes, like cockroaches, will survive the apocalypse? Hehe)
I love how bikes brought you to your middle two lines.
“that human souls
once loved this land”
could be an opener to another poem.
Thought provoking Rebekah! Hoping for “positive footprints” of those human souls.
Kids and bikes- freedom unless you live on a busy highway and are destined to riding up and down the driveway. This is how I wish it was.…
ESCAPING
Pedaling fast,
free at last.
Wind in my hair
going… anywhere!
LOVE the motion and freedom here. Takes me back to my childhood. We lived on a very busy four-lane street with heavy traffic all day. But I rode my bike everywhere (thank goodness we had sidewalks), and my bike was my freedom.
Love that last word with your title. I remember the freedom of my bike.
Cute Cindy. We had the fun of a block-long sidewalk. But we knew we could not cross the street that would connect us to another block of sidewalk.
Just had my kids down to the Jersey shore, and boy did they love their freedom to ride their bikes wherever they wanted. Your poem captures this perfectly.
Love your end of summer take.
I started with “put out to pasture” but it morphed.
Two faithful friends
At day’s end
Will pedal-wend
Homeward again.
What a lovely use of slant rhymes, and that ‑end sound gives it a contented and somewhat wistful sound.
Love the sound of your “ending” words and pleasant scenario.
Donna, I like the way you used end and wend. A melancholy image, but in a good way!
Donna I loved the way your poem read, especially “two faithful friends”, such a lovely image.
Your picture looks peaceful. My poem ruins the mood.
Long, sweaty bike ride
to the salt lake.
“I though you
brought water,”
she said.
Haha–oh, dear. And your poem makes me remember how unrelentingly hot it felt standing at the lake. Exposed, crunchy, salty air, glaring sunlight. Ugh.
Truth spoken, for sure. Thanks for the laugh Lauren.
Lauren I just loved your poem, it made me laugh out loud.
Used your ending as a mentor text for mine.
A New Dawn
Ready to ride
Into the unknown.
Everyday -
A new dawn.
GO!
Oh, this is lovely, Rose! As always, I’m a huge fan of using someone else’s word, line, poem to leapfrog into my own, so I love the connection you shared between your poem and mine:>)
I can feel the energy.
Rose, your poem is full of inspiration and encouragement!
Such fun in your poem Laura. Feeling the six skips into fall this morning. My favorite season is upon us. I love the vastness and solitude of the picture.
Utopia
Sunset or moonrise
sea or sand
two bikes
two hearts
limitless
imaginings.
Those are great words for this image–vastness and solitude. I love how your poem basically says (to me, anyway) that the time, the place…doesn’t matter. It’s the two hearts that make it whatever it is. They’re the heart (hehe) of it.
This is so sweet.
Your poem is just beautiful Martha.
I’m wondering where the bike riders went! Just want you to know I live near the Great Salt Lake in Utah. If you swim in it, you float way more than in regular water. The only thing that can live in it is a little creature called a brine shrimp. The lake, or at least the beach, is a little smelly.
Bikes
Two nice bikes
sitting in the sun.
Their owners decided
to get off and run.
Cool! Our daughter got to swim in the Dead Sea recently. Same thing. And the salt lakes in Larnaca did have a strong smell, even though the beaches have almost none! Growing up in Florida, I assumed all oceans and seas smelled the same. Florida coast is strongly salt-smelling. But I see now that’s not true!
poem By Jessica Bigi
When We Were Kids
We tucked E.T into our bicycle baskets
peddled through dreams up to the moon
Oh, that is lovely! Such a mixture of the original thing you’re referencing (ET) and your lovely childhood recollection of it!
yes like the vome
like that move
Laura this picture stirs so many emotions in me, but I went with nostalgia. I love your line “six skips into fall”, such a great visual.
Reminiscence
Remember I sprang like the sea?
Remember you languished in me?
Now I’m just salty.
Mercy–I could read this poem several ways, and one has me fanning myself! I love the use of “languished.” Sigh…
“I love your Six skips into fall
Plunk!”
And what a fun and evocative image Laura, thanks for sharing it with us.
I wrote this early this morning but had to run off to teach
See the turquoise sea,
by the lime yellow lakeby the bird-busied bikes …
I like the lively rhythm of this, Michelle!