Poetry Friday Is Here!

Last summer William and I spent two weeks with my parents. On one of our last days together we went to the zoo to see their brand new meerkats. (This picture shows William crawling through a "tortoise shell" on the playground.) I loved the polar bears, while William was quite taken with the rhinos. The day was overcast and before long we found ourselves caught in the rain. This poem reminds me of that day.

Rain at the Zoo
by Kristen Tracy

A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked open
the sky. Zebras zipped across the field.

Read the entire poem.

I'm happy to be hosting this shindig, so without further ado, here's what folks are sharing in the world of poetry this week.

The Early Bird Edition

You will find a variety poems in the form of dictionary entries in this week's poetry stretch results.

Kurious Kitty of Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet has a review of Poetry Out Loud.

Laura Purdie Salas shares an original poem entitled Is This Cold?.

Diane Mayr of Random Noodling shares Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses by Alberto Rios.

Tiel Aisha Ansari of Knocking From Inside shares an original poem entitled Practice Pieces.

Jone (MsMac) from Check It Out shares her thoughts about reading Writing and Enjoying Haiku by Jane Reichhold.

Linda of Write Time also shares an original poem entitled Shopping.

Father Goose shares an original poem entitled If Words Wore Shoes.

Anastasia Suen is sharing Gorilla Garage by Mark Shulman over at Picture Book of the Day.

The Rise and Shine Edition

The folks at Color Online are sharing the poetry of January O'Neil.

Mary Lee from A Year of Reading shares the poetry of Emily Dickinson as TextFlow.

Writer2b from Across the Page has me singing. You will be too when you see she's sharing the Modern Major General from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance.

Tanita Davis is doing that "when in Rome thing" and sharing a Scots language poem called Gin I Was God.

Sara Lewis Holmes of Read*Write*Believe shares The Eel by Harry Clifton.

Carol of Carol's Corner is sharing a football poem in honor of her boys.

Andrea and Mark of Just One More Book!! are sharing their thoughts on the book Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin.

Andi of a wrung sponge shares a review of A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson.

Laura Purdie Salas shares the results of this week's 15 words or less prompt.

Jama from Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup shares the poem I'm Lonely As the Letter X by Diane Lockward.

Over at the KR Blog, Kazim Ali has a wonderful post on 8 Ways Running is Like Poetry. (A while back he wrote 8 Ways Yoga is Like Poetry.)

The folks at the Stenhouse Blog share two poems on the life of a teacher.

The Late Lunch Edition

Susan from Black-Eyed Susan also shares a poem from January O'Neil's book Underlife.

The ladies from Seven Imp share the poem Incubus by Craig Arnold.

Liz Garton Scanlon of Liz in Ink shares a poem about aching fingers by Marlys West.

Karen Edmisten shares The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain.

Kelly Fineman of Writing and Ruminating shares an original poem entitled The Giraffe Pen on Thursday, at Noon.

Elaine Magliaro shares a bunch o' poetry today. First, at Wild Rose Reader you'll find an original poem entitled Rain Barrel. At Blue Rose Girls she's sharing a post about writer's block, a poem about poetry, and more. Finally, at Political Verses you'll find another original entitled Bah Humbug Exercise: A Poem That Could Have Been Written by Rush Limbaugh.

Shelf Elf shares the poem Open Air by Rita Dove.

The Evening Edition

Marjorie at the Paper Tigers blog shares an excerpt from a Personal View written by Jorge Luján.

Little Willow of Bildungsroman shares Prologus to The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker.

Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children writes about some collections by Myra Cohn Livingston, whose birthday is just around the corner.

Happy Reading!