Poetry Stretch Results - The Sun

The challenge this week was to write a sun poem. Here are the results.

Beachcomber
by Steven Withrow of Crackles of Speech

Sitting in the sand,
sifting through her pail
of wonders from the waves,
she whispers to a shell
a secret that the sea-sound
sings back to her.
Her rescued rocks
are round enough for skipping,
and her bits of beach glass,
blues and greens,
shade the shoreline
a shimmering rainbow.
The crown of her cache
is a crab’s claw, freshly
dug from a dune
with a double-headed shovel,
like a buried bone,
a bird’s fossil,
Neptune’s ghost-glove,
or a knight’s gauntlet.
Her tiny bucket
is a treasure box
of human jetsam, too:
a hard-plastic juice cup
cracked at the lip,
a red crayon, the lid
off a popcorn can,
a pearl-toothed comb
a mermaid dropped
among the driftwood
for a girl to find,
a gift of friendship
and a message sent
to make certain
someone will recall
the sacred code.
The gulls, in loops,
fly low over the ground,
hunting for scraps
and screeching hungrily,
angrily, echoing
at every angle
around her head.
She hears their ruckus
only as a murmured
music from the ocean,
a lullaby,
a barnacle’s laugh
as the rising tide
tickles its ribs.
The dappled sun
will soon go down.
Her sieve is full
of falling sand.

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved


Mad Kane shared a limerick entitled Healthy, Or Half-Baked?. She also left this poem in the comments.

A woman was feeling undone
By years in the hot, baking sun.
Her skin was a fright.
What a rough, wrinkly sight!
And suitors? Alas, she had none.


Julie Larios of The Drift Record shared this poem.

Undone
by sun
today,
I play
and get
all giddy.
Ready,
set, go goofy
on the lawn,
running
so the sun
will see me
and be pleased
as punch -
ooooooo-
eeeeeee,
flying
like a bumble
bee, I buzz
goodbye
to my
rain funk,
today
I'm twirling
on the grass
because I'm sun-
drunk.

Julie wrote to let us know that the kind of sun in her poem hadn't hit the Pacific Northwest yet. Apparently, Jane Yolen isn't seeing much in Scotland either!

Another Grey Day

The Scottish sky is a pearl,
grey and white, full of lustre
with no sign of sun.
Yet the garden pulses green
and flowers lift their dewy faces
in hope towards the sky.
As do I.
As do I.

©2011 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved

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.