Poetry Stretch Results - A Rhyming Adventure

The challenge this week was to generate a list of rhyming words inspired by your surroundings and then write a poem inspired by them. Here are the results.

Tiel Aisha Ansari from Knocking From Inside shares a poem entitled Mallow.

Jane Yolen left this poem in the comments.

Stone

“If the sky falls we shall catch larks”

There is a stone on my mantle,
Just the one, carved with a phrase
That stops the heart. I am alone,
My birder husband gone these three years,
Under a large stone in a garden of stones.
So the sky has fallen, I am undone,
No one to point out the larks.
But when I look at the bones
Of his face in photos, remember the tone of his voice,
honed to a whisper in his last days,
I am thrown into the maelstrom
Of wind, earth, sky, the unknown,
And there are larks, larks singing to the throne of God.

© 2009 Jane Yolen

Julie Larios from The Drift Record shares a poem entitled What Day Does.

I've had a really hard time writing since my dad died. I thought it would be easier than this, but I see a little bit of him in everything. My rhyming list was inspired by the items on my bookshelves and mantle. I finally settled on the jade monkey I bought him in Tibet a few years ago.

The jade monkey holding a peach
sits on the shelf, just within reach.
I pat his bald head and smile,
remembering the negotiation--
dueling calculators the mode of
communication.
Instead of words there were
head shakes,
double takes,
rolled eyes,
threatened goodbyes
and sighs of exasperation.
With determination came
celebration, and the purple
monkey was mine.

A gift for my father I
didn’t bother to wrap it,
placing it instead amongst
his growing menagerie.

Now it’s mine again,
this symbol of longevity
that failed to fulfill
it’s destiny.

It's not too late if you still want to play. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll add it to the list.