The last challenge of the year was to write about bells. I had a lot of grand ideas, many fits and starts, but kept coming back to one topic. When I was 12, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and came to live with us. I loved her dearly, but she was tough on my mom, who had married her only son. She complained about everything, and almost always claimed it was my mother's fault. My mother never complained about the less than kind treatment. She lost her patience only once, when surely she was on her last nerve every day. One of the things that drove my mother to drink (seriously, she went through a lot of Harvey's Bristol Cream in those days) was the bell my grandmother rang to get our attention. I remember quite clearly it disappearing after my grandmother's death. So, that's the bell I wrote about.
This poem is in the form of a Bob and Wheel. Here are the guidelines:
- Quintain (or five-line) stanza or poem
- Rhyme scheme of ababa
- First line of two to three syllables
- Lines two through five have six syllables per line
- Tanita Davis
- Mary Lee Hahn
- Sara Lewis Holmes
- Kelly Ramsdell
- Laura Purdie Salas
- Liz Garton Scanlon
- Andi Sibley
