Poem - A - Day

One of the bloggers on the Writers Digest website, Robert Lee Brewer, has a month-long event on his blog Poetic Asides called "Poem a Day"; he publishes one writing prompt every day and those who are following along take the prompt, write a poem, and then post it in his comments. More than a thousand people are participating!

What's nice about the challenge is that it's not guilt-inducing: he doesn't expect everyone to write a poem every single day. In fact, you don't have to register to join in and you're allowed to just jump in (or out) any time.

I heard about it late, and though I've read his prompts daily, I haven't managed to sit down and write until today. This morning, after a snowy trip to church and Easter lunch out with friends, we came home and my son began working on a poetry project for school. It seemed like a most opportune moment to get around to writing one of those poems!

Today's writing prompt was, "I want you to take the phrase "So we decided to (blank)" and fill in the blank. Make that your title and write a poem." As my inspiration, I imagined what was likely going on in households all over the Colorado Springs area this morning as we awoke to a very snowy landscape. The fact that we live at the foot of Pikes Peak makes our weather very extreme and quite unpredictable at times. I used a technique I'd learned in a poetry class I took recently where you juxtapose the order of words. I think it makes the poetry a bit lighter and playful. What do you think?

So We Decided to Love our Peak

by Laurie Jackson

The mountain made the sky forget

it’s April, and Easter, a day for sun

Down snowflakes dropped, thick and wet,

as up we woke, prepared for fun

“Oh no – snow!” we out loud moaned

our yesterday memories clear and bright

We grumpy groused and crabby groaned

that the weather could change over so night

Mother smiled – she wasn’t worried

She had, of course, a plan in mind

So down we piped and up she hurried

To indoor hide hunt eggs to find

Out she shooed, upstairs we waited

and outside gazed from the windowsill

as snowflakes fell on our garden gated

and landed a landscape soft and still

One by one we started to speak

to murmur how it sure looked nice

So we decided to love our Peak

to take good beauty with bad ice

We upped our chins and had a go

at Easter egg hunting in our pjs,

then rode to church in snow drive slow,

and ahead dreamed to sunny May days

It's so much fun to spend time on poetry -- if this sounds good to you at all, I encourage you to pop over to Poetic Asides and try your hand at one of his prompts. If you're not going to write, pop over anyway to read what others have offered!