Day 2: Before and After a Snail

Happy almost 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:>) ]

If I’m super honest, snails aren’t my all-time favorite animal. They’re not even in the top 100. But several poetry friends have written recent books featuring snails, and I want to read them: Irene Latham’s Snail’s Ark and Kat Apel’s What Snail Knows and I thought there was one more! I’m sure I’ll like snails better by the time I read their books! As I looked over yesterday’s magnet words, “jelly” caught my attention. That immediately made me think of a snail’s slimy trail. And I was off! Do you like the creative way I made “before,” sort of? Once I had that “jelly,” and I thought of snails as lovable book characters, I needed to show what came before that trail.

What words will I be digging through today?

And here’s the card that I can pull my topic from:

So my possible topics are:

  1. bowler
  2. beanie
  3. top
  4. baseball
  5. hats

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

 

12 Responses

  1. Here is my poem from April 1:
    I selected CRAB but chose to go in a different direction from non-fiction.
    I thought of someone who is a grump!

    My found poem from digging through your wordbank follows (and, agai,n I enjoyed this hunting for treasure here, thank you, Laura!)

    Crazy ?

    I believe, friend,
    His brilliant shine,
    fully holy,
    calls for
    a better end.

    1. Oooh. What a cool take. I love that you went a different direction–that’s the whole point of this month :>) This is thought-provoking, esp since I have an extremely grumpy (for his entire life) dad. Thanks, Janet!

  2. Love that you made it a friend, Laura, especially after your earlier words of distaste. I wrote one for my prompt tomorrow, will share then!

    1. Love it, Denise! I’m thinking of the giant tortoises I’ve seen at zoos. SO amazing.

  3. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I saw your word bank here and wrote this.

    Young Riot

    Belly heart
    Darkness
    Firm flow
    Rough change
    Light
    Beautiful wail
    Amazing

    1. That is perfect, Donna. You don’t need to know anything more than what led to this poem. I love how visceral, how sensory it is!

  4. Hi dear Laura!

    Healing wishes for your Dad.

    I luv this snail stuff.

    And out off the box protocols, with apologies for an out-of-order, out-of-form comment,
    I’m so taken with our similar topic so close in time,
    here’s my garden snail poem inspired by
    an unexpected long visit of a Rosy Wolf Snail &
    below, a video link of the Rosy who came calling so recently.

    Hello, Snail
    Jan Godown Annino

    I could not fail
    to admire this snail/

    Rosy Wolf in name
    seeking garden slug is its’ game/

    A slow yard sail
    that didn’t fail/

    To bring me smiles with
    snail mail./
    c. April 2023 JGAoffice@gmail.com

    The video of part of this lovely creature’s amble is on my Instagram here:
    https://www.instagram.com/p/CqV0aWXLr7-ZBhCw_0mFs7a2fqtiAJD0Ho0AF40/

    And I mentioned the visit at my first Poetry Month 2023 post on the Bookseedstudio blog post here:
    https://bookseedstudio.wordpress.com/2023/04/07/notebook-1-poetry-month-2023/

    1. Jan, this is delightful. I love the “snail mail.” Wow. After watching your video, I’m speechless. We saw some very large snails (not sure what species) when we were in Cyprus years ago. They freaked me out. Yup. Still freaked out. Love your “slow yard sail,” too. This is such a clever poem!

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