Supposedly February is the shortest month, but it sure doesn’t feel like it this year. It’s gone on and on and on….Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Project has been a welcome distraction from my mid-winter doldrums, although keeping up with the daily art prompts has been tough this past week. I think I might be three or four behind! Eek! During break next week, I’m excited to kick back and enjoy catching up and keeping up. Here are two of my recent efforts:

unsigned needlepoint

Blessing for a Rabbit

May your path be smooth and easy
your soft fur free from clinging burrs
May you leap with grace
and land with certainty
and always be downwind
May you see farmers’ backs
more than their faces
and find warm shelter in stormy weather
May your days be carrot and parsley blessed
And when those days reach their end,
may you slip into peace
in floral scented shade
to wander midst the bounty
of McGregor’s garden

M. Hogan (c) 2018

Monday by L.D. Wight

(I’m not sure about the ending two lines of this next poem. I almost left them off and am still pondering removing them.)

Mama’s Mad Again

Her anger roils from the porch
blasts us in the front yard
scours the grins from our faces
Her look could bleach sheets

We stop our impromptu
swirling washtub dance
hoist the heavy tub
and prepare to scrub
but soap and water
can’t remove all stains.

M. Hogan (c) 2018

And then a random poem popped up mid-week:

There is beauty
in yielding
says the birch
who, under heavy weight,
arches gracefully
to touch the snowy ground

M. Hogan (c) 2018

Jone Rush MacCulloch is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup on her cleverly named blog, Check It Out. While there, you can sign up to receive a Poetry Postcard from a student in April! Win-win!

So far I’ve continued to keep pace with Laura Shovan’s Ekphrastic Poetry Project–well, mostly. It’s definitely keeping me busy and I’m enjoying the process, if not always the results. Here are a few poems from this past week.

I do not have permission to share a photo of the artwork that inspired this next poem. It was a sketch drawn in white on a black background, like chalk on a chalkboard. A person’s head rests on a table/board, and her eyes are closed. On the table beneath her is a line of chalk that meanders about to end at one of her hands, which still holds a pen (or pencil or stylus). The flow of that one line reminded me of maps and travel and it seemed to leak from her closed eye, like a stream of tears.  Even after I decided to work with the “House that Jack Built” form, I still wasn’t sure where I was going. This poem really took on a life of its own as I wrote.

The Map that Jack Drew

This is the map that Jack drew

This is the tear that started the map that Jack drew

This is the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

These are the words that seeded the sorrow
that fed the tear that started the map that Jack drew

This is the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

This is the mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

This is the man, vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

These are the men, wined and dined,
that propped up the man, so vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

This is the truth, much maligned
ignored by the men, wined and dined
that propped up the man, so vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

These are the people, bold and fine
who spoke up for truth, much maligned
ignored by the men, wined and dined,
that propped up the man, so vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

These are the roads that twisted and twined
that filled up with people, bold and fine
that spoke up for truth, much maligned
ignored by the men, wined and dined
that propped up the man, so vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

This is the map for all mankind
to take to the roads that twist and twine
to join the people, bold and fine
who speak up for truth, much maligned
ignored by the men, wined and dined
that propped up the man, so vain and blind
that spoke his mind, so unkind,
that moved the mouth that uttered the words
that seeded the sorrow that fed the tear
that started the map that Jack drew

M. Hogan (c) 2018

Finally, on a lighter note, after reading Michelle H. Barnes Today’s Little Ditty interview with Jane Yolen and J. Patrick Lewis last week, I was inspired by their challenge to write a funny epitaph. I think I’ll be trying a few more of these!

Epitaph for a Reader

She piled books beside her bed
Some to read, some already read
Throughout the years her book stack grew
Classics, mysteries, novels, too
The content of these tomes fulfilled her
Sadly a massive bookslide killed her

M. Hogan (c) 2018

Make sure to head on over to the Poetry Friday Roundup. It’s hosted this week by Sally Murphy, vivacious Australian poet extraordinaire, at her blog. You’re sure to enjoy her terse verse and you have to admire a poet who creates poetry during a dental procedure!

According to Wikipedia, “A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances which have no apparent causal connection with each other. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims.”

Last month, I experienced a number of striking coincidences in my life.

The seed for the first one was planted during a conversation with my sister, who is a middle-school librarian. We love talking books, especially kid lit.  Over the holidays, as we traded recommendations, she asked, “Oh, have you read any of the Spy School books?”
“No,” I said, “I’ve never heard of them.”
“They’re fun,” she said. “They run a bit young for middle school, but your fourth graders might really like them.”

A week or so later, I was at the library. What was that series that Ellen recommended? Oh, yeah, Spy School. (Note–it’s truly amazing that I even remembered this!) I wandered over to the library computer which appeared to be in sleep mode. I clicked and the screen came to life. Locating the search icon on the desktop, I clicked again and after a moment the search screen appeared…along with the name of the last book searched for: Spy School. Crazy coincidence, right!?!

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through Target’s Cartwheel coupons and saw one for Compound W. For some reason my mind went hurtling back about a decade, to a time we invested considerable money into that product.

“Hey, Kurt,” I called to my husband, “”Do you remember when you had all those warts on your hand that were so hard to get rid of?”

“Yeah,” he said, coming into the room. “That’s so weird that you ask. I think one of them might be coming back. I just noticed it yesterday.”

Ok, not quite as startling of a coincidence, but still!

Finally, that same day, I read Rebecca Herzog’s Poetry Friday post. She linked to a song called “Langtree’s Lament.” I listened to it and thought it would appeal to my daughter, Addie, who lives in Philadelphia and who’s recently bought a ukulele. So, I sent her the link.

I mean, really, what are the odds?

So, what does it all mean? Are there supernatural, occult or paranormal forces at hand? I don’t know, but I’m wondering. And I’m keeping my eye out for wart-handed spies strumming ukuleles and singing encoded songs. But perhaps the message is more subtle…

PS Langtree’s Lament is well worth listening if you have a few minutes to spare.

Today marks the official beginning of Laura Shovan’s 6th annual February Poetry Project. Each year, in celebration of her birthday month, Laura invites writers to join her in responding to a poetry prompt.(Thanks, Laura!!!) This year participants have signed up to share photos of art from within their homes. The task is then to write ekphrastic poems, which are poems inspired by or responding to works of art. The quick turn around time on these can be a bit cringe-inducing, but it’s all about writing, sharing and growing. (Or at least that’s what I tell myself!)

Since January 25th, there have been daily warm-up opportunities. It’s been challenging to keep up with writing and with reading all the shared poems, but it’s also been so rewarding. Here are a few of the poems I’ve created in response to a lovely variety of art.

This week’s  Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by fellow Mainer, Donna Smith, at her blog, Mainely Write. She’s sharing a bouquet of poetry postcards and you’ll find links to a whole garden of poetry. Enjoy!

One day last week, as I was rushing around getting ready to leave for school, I glanced out the window. The sunrise was reflecting beautifully off my steep driveway. Ugh! Once again the recent weather had transformed it into a sheet of glistening ice. With our 4WD and AWD cars, we can make it up the hill, but no other vehicles can–including the oil company’s delivery truck, a sadly common and vital visitor these days.

On my way into the bathroom, I grabbed my phone and quickly texted our plow guy:

I set the phone down, completed my bathroom business and then grabbed it and headed out to the family room to continue packing up my stuff. I glanced at the phone and saw a response.

Hmmmm…What’s that? It looks like an audio file. Is he responding to me with a voice message? 

I clicked on the play icon. Faint whooshing and rumbling sounds emerged.

Is he in his truck?  I set the phone down and grabbed my books and papers, intent on stuffing them into my over-flowing tote and getting out the door.

Why isn’t he talking? 

I continued to pack up and listen to the whooshing sounds.

This is odd. Can you butt dial an audio? 

Brush. Brush. Brush. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Now, that sounds like he’s brushing his teeth. I just brushed my teeth, too. We must be on a similar schedule. 

Step. Creak. Step. Creak.

Hmmm…His floor is as creaky as ours is! 

A millisecond later the mental audio dots connected to form a very ugly picture….

OMG! I was just brushing my teeth on a creaky old floor! He wasn’t!

I pushed the stop button on the file and stared aghast at my phone. The audio was me…in the bathroom! How did I even do that?? What exactly had I recorded? 

And then my plow guy’s words appeared:

My thoughts raced. Has he listened to it yet? OMG, what else did I do in the bathroom? Did I say anything??? Did I brush my teeth before or after….The first raised audio “spikes” must be me tapping my toothbrush. But what is that second group of audio spikes???  AAHHHHHH!

Increasingly horrified, I stared at my phone. How did I even make that recording? Is there any way to delete it? Suddenly, I noticed a small blue button beneath the file:  “Keep.” Oh, thank goodness. I can just keep this. I felt a surge of relief and quickly clicked on the button.

Whoosh!

Uh. oh.

In an instant a notice appeared on my screen–Delivered.

Oh, dear God! I just sent it!!! Quickly, in a panic,I typed,

He never responded, and I just couldn’t bring myself to listen to the rest of the recording. Fingers crossed that he didn’t either!

One of my writing goals this year is to attempt to write more structured forms of poetry. Not long ago I even took some notes about the structure of sonnets. Yes, sonnets! Yikes! Just the word is intimidating! But a funny thing happened. At the end of a recent snow day, I wrote the following poem, as usual, in free verse:

Snow Day

Perhaps come June
I’ll lament this day
but for now I luxuriate
as the storm paints the landscape
and daubs each tree limb
with generous swirls of white
and acrobatic squirrels leap
from branch to branch,
releasing shimmering snowfalls
and a flock of puffed up bluejays
perches on branches,
a tufted winter bouquet

M. Hogan (c) 2018

The next morning, I woke with the first line shifted in my head: Come June, I may lament this snowy day. Immediately I thought–Oh! I could use that line to begin a sonnet! Game on! I got up, grabbed my notebook, printed out Browning’s Sonnet 43 (How Do I Love Thee) as a mentor text, and got to work. And work it was–though ultimately, a labor of love.  I was so energized. I kept thinking–Whoa! I’m really writing a sonnet! A sonnet! I’m doing it! (This feels like real poetry stuff!) And now, I’m not sure which poem I prefer, but I’m simply delighted that this next one exists, lumpy head and all. Happy birthday to my very first sonnet.

Snow Day

Come June, I may lament this snowy day
but school is closed and time less tightly wound
and perching birds brush snowfalls to the ground
which shimmer, shift and shine along the way
So now my senses feast on Nature’s play
as snowflakes fall and muffle earthly sound
and paint the world a vision to astound
This wintry show doth take my breath away
The petty worries vanish from my mind
as window-bound I stare in sheer delight
and watch as snowflakes to each other bind
to mound until the world is only white
Within me joy and thanks grow intertwined
for all the world seems fresh and new and bright.

M. Hogan (c) 2018

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond LiteracyLink. Make sure to stop by and celebrate winter’s creative endeavors with Carol’s  post and the linked “flurry” of poems!

Photo by Jay Heritage Center 2010 https://www.flickr.com/photos/jayheritagecenter/4511169213

Last month, at the end of a quick visit with my sister, we snuck in a morning walk at a local nature preserve. It was a bitterly cold morning and even bundled up and moving briskly, we felt the chill. I stopped once in a while to take photographs then, moaning about the pain in my freezing fingers, hurried to catch up with the others. It was a beautiful, sparkly day, but not a day to linger in any one spot.

The preserve hugs the shores of Long Island Sound and trails meander through a variety of landscapes: open fields, wooded areas, and shoreline. I imagine it’s a beautiful place to visit repeatedly and enjoy the changes of the seasons. On our visit I was fascinated by the tall feathery grasses. I took picture after picture, trying to capture the play of light and the varying textures.

Then, walking over a small bridge on a woodland path, we stumbled upon these dramatic seed pods, which none of us could identify. I was captivated by their spiky shells and the long shadows. What sort of tree or plant emerges from these other-worldly pods?

We returned from our trip and I put these unidentified seed pods out of mind. (I know…this demonstrates a lamentable lack of curiosity.) But then this weekend, while avoiding my To Do list, I read a post by a blogger I follow. She shared a picture of similar pods in the snow along with an accompanying poem. I hoped she would be able to solve the mystery of the pods’ identity.

Alas, that wasn’t the case. Her reply, however, sparked this thought: “To google or not to google” which lead to a quick reread of Hamlet’s soliloquy, which lead to this:

To google or not to google, that is the question
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to allow
the lingering question and wonder of the unknown
or to take arms against ignorance
and tapping keys, arrive at certainty
Ah, certainty, that brave and boldly struts
its knowledge upon the boards for all to see
yet snuffs out richest curiosity
To google or not to google, that is the question…

M. Hogan (c) 2018

Emerging from that rabbit hole, I considered my next weekend activity. Perhaps I should write a poem about the pods, I thought. (Especially when the alternatives look like paying bills, cleaning, school work, or changing the headlight in my Subaru.) So, I played around a bit, debating how best to proceed. Recently, when contemplating writing a poem about an image, I’ve begun to jot down every word that comes to mind and then seek inspiration from within that word pool. The pool for these pods included: gamble, dice, seed pods, alien, cast, mystery, capsules, prickly spikes, shadows, nascent, and casing.

Bold pod voyagers,
what nascent life form lingers
within your prickly carapace?
Have you lost this round
of the seasonal gamble?

M. Hogan (c) 2018

After writing the above, I finally gave in to the allure of google and looked up the pods. It didn’t take long to identify them. Drum roll please….. They are… sweet gum tree seed pods! Since they apparently come from one of the most common hardwoods in the SE US, many of you might already have recognized them.  They were new to me though, so, of course, I then dove headfirst down that rabbit hole and emerged a while later, having learned a bit more about sweet gum trees–their resin, bark, nicknames, etc. I won’t share all of it here, but you might be interested to learn that these seed pods each contain 40-60 capsules and each capsule contains 1-2 seeds. Now that’s a pretty hefty seed bomb!

Thinking back over the wandering trajectory of this post, I realize that while most of it took place in a day, the initial sparks for it occurred almost a month ago. Writing’s funny like that. I suppose the ideas were percolating all this time. Percolating… Now that’s a great word! Maybe I can write a poem about that…

This week has been a tough one for writing–a bit of a slog. I’ve been struggling with this poem for a while now, and I’m posting it even though it’s still a work in progress. I’m especially unsure about the final lines.

Winter

Winter’s cold pierces like talons
Her full moon,
an unblinking, predatory orb,
casts a questing glow

In the late night stillness
of her bitter chill,
darkened tree limbs tap and creak
beneath their ninguid burdens
Shadows flicker and flow
in pockets of dark
like whispers

Winter stretches her wings
soars in silent flight then
swoops
with lethal grace

the rabbit’s death cry
rips the night
shattering the frigid air

safe in our homes
sleeping in warm feathered beds
we shift uneasily

Molly Hogan (c) 2018

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Kay McGriff at her blog, A Journey Through The Pages. Make sure to stop by and warm up with some poetry this weekend!

Photo from Shallotte River Swamp Park in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina

Wow! That’s some crazy adaptive trick! Alligators, feeling the unusual chill of this winter and the onset of ice, have gone into a period of brumation*. That’s essentially the reptilian version of hibernation. They stick their snouts out of the ice so they can breathe, go into a semi-vegetative state, and….well, survive! I never thought I’d feel sorry for an alligator, but mixed with my admiration for their innate survival skills is a distinct feeling of pity– that ice just does not look comfortable up against that alligator skin. Can alligators get frost bite?

Cold Snap

Winter creeps with stealth and speed
Alligator, best take heed!

In cold wind’s wake, an icy snare
     Alligator, best beware!

Winter springs her freezing trap
Alligator, LOOK OUT…

SNAP!

M. Hogan (c) 2018

And with a nod to Lewis Carroll,

How doth the wind of winter
blast out its frigid tale
til swampy waters splinter
on each reptilian scale

How stealthily it forms a skin
How neatly primes its trap
And welcomes alligators in
with gripping icy SNAP!

M. Hogan (c) 2018

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by J.G. Annino at her blog, BookSeedStudio. Stop by to start your long weekend off right with her post honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and with links to poems galore.

*Oops! I just corrected this to read brumation–originally I had erroneously typed bromation. Sorry!

In 2016 after much deliberation, I selected my first OLW–Choose. Last year, for no real reason, I skipped the entire process. In all honesty, I hadn’t given it much thought this year either. Then on January 1st, I sat down to write and my mind wandered to OLW.  Did I have any ideas? Almost immediately the word, Pause, popped into my mind. Hmmmm…. Where did that come from?

The word pause always reminds me of my youngest daughter, Lydia. When my children were young, we did not have television, but we did watch videos. Lydia quickly picked up on the value of the pause button and integrated that word into her life. We’d be playing a game or reading a book and she’d suddenly yell, “Pause it!” and dash off to do something (often involving a bathroom visit). Then a few seconds or minutes later, she’d return, say “OK” and we were free to resume our activity. The word pause certainly worked for her.

I started writing down some random thoughts, exploring the possibilities.

As I wrote, I realized that within a pause, there lies a world of possibility. Just think of how powerful a strategic pause is when reading aloud. We use pauses to gather our thoughts or to emphasize meaning.  When one pauses, it’s an opportunity to make a change or to stay the course with renewed vigor or determination. While a pause can be seen as hesitation, there can be a deliberateness to pausing that appeals to me: A pause adds weight to whatever comes next. It creates space to make a better decision–to choose a more thoughtful response, silence a negative comment, decide not to push send, etc.

You also need to pause to notice and appreciate. Too often I get caught up in the day to day rush of things and forget to pause, to take time to connect with others or simply to relax and breathe. I rush past people, things and ideas without noticing them. Pausing opens up a space and makes room for these things.

Finally, pausing is a prerequisite for reflection. Nudged by my new OLW, I decided to take some time and look back over my year of photographs and then share and write about my favorites. (here) I’m so glad I did! The process was enlightening and crystallized some of my thoughts about photography and writing.

So this year, I’m going to take a page from my daughter’s playbook. I’m going to try pushing that pause button and see what happens. So far, so good.