Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and welcome to 15 Words or Less Poems! Are you ready to wake up your poetry brains with our weekly exercise (guidelines here)?
Here’s a picture I took in the South Bend, IN, airport on my way home from the Young Authors Conference last weekend.
Photo: Laura P. Salas
This image makes me think of:
- barbed wire
- playing jacks with Cathy S on the cool terazzo floor during hot Florida summers
- artificial snow
And, here’s my first draft.
It’s your turn! Have fun and stick to 15 WORDS OR LESS! (Title doesn’t count toward word count)
Attention, poets! I’m writing poetry with students today at a Young Authors Conference, so I won’t be able to reply to your poems. I will read and enjoy them, though, probably on my lunch break.
Hansel and Gretel
Cold bones
on colder stones
clattering through the stale silence
on their way to soup
Nostalgia galore Amelia. Your poem brings back memories of watching “Captain Kangaroo” with my children. We still have occasion to discuss the lesson learned from stone soup.
Yipes, Amelia! How nicely chilling!
Yes, Amelia, that does resemble bones. I didn’t see that, but I like the way your turned it into a little poem on Stone Soup. One of my favorite activities when I was teaching.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day one and all. Remembering back to mama keeping tabs on which child received the wishbone from the previous Sunday dinner.
Mother Hubbard’s Fantasy
No dreams of golden eggs
but of gold ribbons
awarded to hens
with multiple wishbones.
How often did you get that wishbone, Martha?
There were three of us and mom alternated chicken and roast beef on Sundays, so maybe every six weeks, unless the cousins were visiting and then there was no choice but to let one of them have it. What memories!
Late snow is right! We had about two weeks of spring, so of course all the buds started budding and my daffodils started coming up. And then a snowfall and chill again. Good luck, buds!
small mathematics
coldly precise
single snowflake
winter device
—Kate Coombs
Not sure where you are located Kate, but here in the south we have the same scenario. Buds abound with below freezing lows and snow in some of the higher elevations. March madness in more ways than one.
When things look so pretty, we do forget that winter is not over YET!
Kate, your poem causes pause to remember the phrase “you can’t fool mother nature,” but we all know mother nature can fool us.
Paper Snowflakes
folding corners
snip -snip-snip
starry paper lace
pasted on a card
I love Mom
poem By Jessica Bigi
Cutting snowflakes. Another fun activity to do in the classroom, and then you took it farther. Making a sweet card for Mom. I like that.
I love your “paper snowflakes.” That craft will never become passe’.
First thing I thought —- snowflake! Made me think that in spite of all the flowering trees and shrubs, by the weekend, we could have some more snow. Ugh! Reminds me of when we lived in Wisconsin and my boys had this same experience one day.
No mittens, scarf, hat.
Get my bike, ball, bat.
Wait! Oh, no!
Not more snow!
Love your rhyming, Pat! Captures a boy’s chagrin just right.
So true Pat. “They” say that it snows somewhere in the world each of the 365 days in the year.
crystals cling to fur,
speckles carpet black nose–
pink tongue erases
Ha! Your dog probably loves the snow.
My dog loves the snow too Buffy. He doesn’t like to tread in his previous tracks to make things easier, he blazes a new trail every time we let him out. You captured it perfectly.
Ballerinas on their toes
dance in unison for shows,
cameras clicking while they pose.
Oh, yes. Parents must have those pictures. Moments in time to remember.
Cindy, it’s easy to imagine little ballerinas on their toes. I like that image.
Silent Flight
Flocks of snow fliers
flowing,fluttering, now
held in a night sky.
Ooh, I like the picture you have painted with your words. I also like “fliers, flowing, fluttering.”
Jane, I like your title very much. I love the silence of a snowfall, as well as the beauty, especially when it covers the not-so-beautify.
This web of life
Cold , calculating
Not warm and inviting
One of life’s mysteries
Annne McKenna
I love the challenge, Laura, but right now I have the challenge of preparing Winter Wanderings. I think your first draft is beautifully paired with the photo you captures and digitalized.