Hello dear friends! Happy 2011. It's been a long while since I've been here with any regularity, but this is a new year and a new start. We could write this week about endings and beginnings, but I've been thinking a lot these last few weeks about things that I have lost and found. Whether they be material things (those darn mittens!) or people we love, surely we've all lost and found things in our lives. Let's write about that.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
No poem, but happy new year!
ReplyDeleteYay, Poetry Stretch is back! Happy New Year to everyone.
ReplyDeleteLost and Found
The day loses color
as the sun slides away.
Gold turns to blue
and blue turns to gray.
Gray turns to charcoal
and charcoal to black.
I'll live without color
till dawn brings it back.
--Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved
Kate, what great poem!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Diane!
ReplyDeleteLost and Found
ReplyDeleteI have lost love,
am trying to find it again.
Not like a black ribbed sock,
lost in the washer,
or a puppy unleashed
who has run away,
or a noun once firmly in my head
and now somewhere in the ether
of an aging mind.
My love was lost to the crab,
to a succession of treatments
that prolonged but did not sustain life.
And now I am looking,
like a bad country song,
in all the wrong places—
on the Internet, at conferences,
during dinner parties,
at gray-haired men on Scottish streets,
in the assembly line of old hands
wanting one more chance at the gold ring,
©Jane Yolen 2011, All rights reserved
Lonely
ReplyDeleteIt’s lonely here in lost and found,
one mitten whispered to one glove.
I hope someone will help me find
the child I will forever love.
I miss throwing piles of snowballs
with that hand I used to hold.
I wonder if he has warm pockets.
I hope he does.
It’s getting cold.
© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
The Changeling
ReplyDeleteOkay, so the baby wasn't perfect,
blemished we often wrapped her
in a blanket of myth. But her
constitution was so sweet.
Admirable. She was loved.
The fairies came under cover
of flag and cross. We became
distracted by trinkets. Our thoughts
shut out by constant noise.
We lost sight of our precious baby.
And the fairies had their way.
© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved
Spooky Diane. And aren't we all distracted by trinkets and when we look up, we have teenagers in the house! Where did that adorable baby go????
ReplyDeleteJane
Oh, Jane, I'm glad you saw it that way! Actually, I was thinking about the USA when I wrote it! I'm feeling a great sense of loss these days.
ReplyDeleteI second Kate's YAY!
ReplyDeleteLOST AND FOUND
That single
staggering word
the one you’ve
lifted rugs to find
swirled lusciously
inside your head
while you dawdled
around your day
lost with one
innocent twirl
of spaghetti
sauced spoon
when fixing
dinner last night
only to reappear
split-secondly
as you sank
deep into
paralyzing
sleep.
© Carol Weis, all rights reserved
Been there, done that! Nice job of putting it into verse, Carol!
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely poems all have shared. This doesn't come close but I've vowed to play more with poetry online this year so here goes.
ReplyDeletefound
on Christmas eve
1 turkey, stuffed
1 bowl of potatoes, mashed with butter
helpings of sweet corn, slices of bread
pumpkin pie, 2 pieces
numerous glasses of wine and champagne
found
on Christmas morning
a stocking full of
fudge, peppermint sticks
a breakfast of bacon, eggs,
biscuits drizzled with butter and honey
more champagne
lost
1 waistline
and most of my willpower
© Susan Taylor Brown, all rights reserved
Diane - I've been feeling that same way about the country, about news and noise, about the trinkets. Love that last line of your poem, which just sends a shiver down my spine.
ReplyDeleteHere is a poem of mine - not new (it was published in Ecotone) - but definitely about losing things.
UPON LOSING ANOTHER EARRING
It’s a long story with lots of losing –
one earring, two earrings, ten, then my hearing,
then the fine hair of my right ear’s interior,
then my balance and my bearing.
Believe me, what’s happening
is the opposite of win-win but why
start whining about the small things?
Soon the lobes will go, and the cartilage after,
as well as what’s larger, what’s between one ear
and the other, then the neck and everything below,
shoulders to toes, breasts, elbows, knees,
God knows there are no safe zones, all of it
will go missing soon enough, just toughen up,
buy another pair and get on with it.
I hate losing one earring. It'd be better to lose a pair. Interesting way of looking at things, though, Julie. I hope you don't lose anything "between one ear
ReplyDeleteand the other"--that's the scariest.
Thanks for the prompt.
ReplyDeleteI Have Lost
That mix tape you made me.
So many pens it's not funny.
My patience way too often.
I blame genetics,
grandfather; your temper
was legendary.
My grandfather.
A friend or two.
My ability to ignore your absence.
Track of time again.
My memory of adult life without
children. (No need for it.)
Control of this poem.
You can read more about it here:
http://thesmallnouns.blogspot.com/2011/01/poetry-collection-crisis.html