My son posed this question over the weekend. "Mom, if you could be any shape, what shape would you be?" While I began pondering my life as a circle or square, I wondered if perhaps a lemniscate or concave polygon might be more appropriate. I'm still thinking about my answer to this question while thinking about shapes in the world around me. Since I'm thinking about shapes, this seemed like a good time to write about them. This is NOT a concrete poem challenge, but rather a challenge to write about a shape and the things you see or the things it makes. However, if you feel the urge to make it concrete, by all means do!
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.a
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.a
S
ReplyDeleteSerpentine S
goes this way and that
Trail in the sand
Tail of a cat
Slithering S
goes that way and this
Starts every snake
Ends every hiss
©Robyn Hood Black
All rights reserved.
Heart
ReplyDelete1.
A real heart is rounder and softer.
It doesn't taper to a point. It's a pump,
like the old water pumps in farmyards
before water flowed obediently through pipes.
You had to work to get water. A heart
works hard, pumping complications.
2.
Twelve-year-old girls sign their notes
with hearts or dot their i's with them.
These hearts are symmetrical, suggesting
that love is an even match, and that red
is a kind color. Instead, love is often
uneven, shifting like sunsets
pink to crimson. Sometimes gold,
sometimes shaded by storms.
Or love is permanently crooked.
3.
The heart is a lonely hunter, and two
hearts beat as one and besides,
my heart belongs to you, yeah baby,
doo-wah, hey honey, yeah yeah—
except when it's occupied
pumping my blood. Which
is pretty much constantly.
4.
Paper hearts lie flat and look good
gussied up with glitter and lace.
But they lack the intricacy
of veins and chambers, lack
the studied construction of a life
spent with somebody else,
the oxygen and cells of love
circulating like words and smiles
for miles and miles of minutes,
for minutes and minutes of days.
5.
Cut out my heart and fold it in half.
Keep it in your pocket, and I
will keep yours. It will wrinkle
and get run through the wash.
It will lose its color. Its edges
will blur. By the time it's done,
it will look like the real thing.
--Kate Coombs, 2010, all rights reserved
Two haiku/senryu:
ReplyDeletethe toddler purses
his lips for a kiss...
a perfect "o"
summer discovery
the stem of the spearmint
a perfect square
One more:
ReplyDeletemile-a-minute weed
the perfect triangle
of the devil's tail
Thinking about the power of circles:
ReplyDeleteSAD ARCHITECT
By Steven Withrow
Because the tide’s rising measure
Drowns the sloping sand bar,
Smoothing over flat beach stones,
Flooding in its awful hour,
I will not build my parapet,
I will not build my tower.
Copyright 2010 by Steven Withrow
Hi Tricia ~ In answer to your son's question, I'd have to go with my favorite shape:
ReplyDeleteI AM HEART
I am heart
oozing hugs
spreading fondness
gushing hope
lending courage
hoisting trust
pumping honor
breathing love
pulsing kindness
onto every passing soul.
Carol Weis, 2010, all rights reserved
Where’s the Point?
ReplyDeleteBy Liz Korba
Straight line – who is forever,
Who will never stop, be there -
Wherever you are going,
I must ask you, do you care?
Do you ever seek an endpoint?
Envy segments, even rays?
Is life hard when it’s forever?
Do you want to stop some days?