Day 15: Singing with Sea Ghosts

Happy National Poetry Month 2023! Curious about what I’m doing? Want to play along? Read more here.

[Heads-up: If you’re visiting regularly, please know that the bold, blue text is what I’m writing fresh each day. The black text is the same each day:>) ]

This one was really tough for me. I just couldn’t put anything together! Nothing felt magical about the tiles from yesterday. I do feel some kind of connection with shipwrecks. Lake Superior has hundreds of them, and shipwrecks in general kind of fascinate me. I was picturing some kind of wind spirit or something singing and howling over a stormy lake, grieving over the sailors lost throughout the centuries.

I didn’t have any immediate picture book connections in mind as I wrote this one, though Patricia Sutton’s fantastic middle-grade nonfiction book, Capsized! (read my review here), came into my head after I finished it. Fabulous book.

What words will we be digging through today?

And here’s the card that we might pull our topic from:

So some possible topics are:

  1. mop
  2. bob
  3. bun
  4. hive
  5. hair

Will you join in? Would love to see what you come up with!

 

9 Responses

  1. Laura, your poem is a strong image. It brought the Titanic to mind… maybe the ghosts are still singing Amazing Grace… There are lots of book (and movie!) connections (first one that comes to mind is Titanicat 🤣). For me, there’s the story my mother told of finding a book about the Titanic that was left behind in a house her family moved into when she was young. Her mother forbid her to read it, saying it would give her nightmares. She hid it and sneaked to read it. She was the youngest of eleven and got away with a lot because her poor mother was too tired to keep up with her rambunctious daughter. When my mom was in her late seventies, I took her to a Titanic exhibit. It was quite an experience with her life-long fascination as a backdrop.

    Now for my poem. You are right, it seems like it’s getting harder to find one! But I like this one. The second line is a choose your own wish.

    Magic

    She says
    (Baby boy) (Baby princess)
    I laugh
    Heart and soul sing

    1. Diane–this truly IS magical. Something about the wording feels very fairy tale-like. And thank you for that story of your mom and her Titanic fascination. And–whenever a grownup tells us we can’t read a book, of course, we just want to read it more. The book my mom hid was Flowers for Algernon. And of COURSE I snuck it and read it!

  2. Laura, without a strong connection to the words, you really made a magical poem. I though of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

    Diane, love what you found in the words yesterday. The perfect kind of magic!

    I couldn’t think of anything except this advice to an arrested mob member:

    Yo, do not sing.
    Button up
    Fast when you
    want a cover.

    1. Hahahaha–I LOVE where you took this! And I can’t imagine you’d have written this without these strange poetry game rules we’re playing within. That first line–brilliant!

  3. Hmmmm. I thought I had put up my poem here late (ie this am before church maybe) but here it is in case it is truly not here.
    I have troubles updating the site, Laura, no idea why. I refresh but sometimes I know for sure something was there, but then can’t find the most updated page. Oh well,
    here is my very quick effort using the words from April 14 which I wanted to post yesterday but ran out of time.

    Mushroom Magic

    I am alone until
    a princess comes.
    “You doubt magic,” she says to me,
    “fool, my heart aches because of you.”
    I am trapped by want.

    N.B. This is another version most likely since I typed the one earlier but did not write my final attempt down since i was rushing. I had a late night yesterday!
    Enjoyed everyone’s but trying to catch up.

    1. I’m sorry you’re having troubles with the site, Janet! Your wonderful frog prince poem is in yesterday’s post. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re talking about or not? Of course, I’m finding it very confusing with many words showing up more than once. I’m learning lessons about what works and what doesn’t in a NPM project. Yikes! I love “trapped by want.” I feel like that describes so very many people…

      1. Thanks, Laura. I actually know I typed a Magic Mushroom poem earlier but maybe forgot to hit submit. I love this project but am using the flexible version ie allowing myself to “cheat” a little because it’s the writing and creating that matters to me and in a safe place. You really are forced to stick to word limitations. It intrigues. And while a challenge, rewarding when a poem kind of appears almost magically.

        1. Okay, just wasn’t sure if you knew it was there! I’m so glad this is a safe place to create <3

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