Tag Archives: Poetry Friday

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And now for something a little lighter…

It’s interesting how different things can come together in your brain and percolate. I’m not sure exactly how all the pieces came together in my head, but I was thinking about Dick Van Dyke (maybe due to trailers of the Coldplay video?) and about laughter (definitely from one of Heidi’s Yuletide prompts). This combination prompted me to watch a video of “I Love to Laugh” from Mary Poppins. We always loved that movie in our family, but I hadn’t watched it in years and years. Here it is, in case you’re interested in refreshing your memory or checking it out for the first time:

Aren’t Julie Andrews and Ed Wynn wonderful, too? I found myself grinning the whole way through. In this day and age, it felt like a breath of fresh air. (And yes, I know that probably makes me sound very old and a bit persnickety, but it’s just such silly fun! And those campy special effects are perfectly charming!)

After watching the video a few times, the song developed into an ear worm that lasted several days. Not quite as much fun. I kept finding myself singing bits and pieces of it at unexpected, and sometimes awkward, times. I also kept turning the name “Dick Van Dyke” over and over in my head, again and again. It suddenly struck me that it might work in a double dactyl poem. So, I settled down to write.

Rewatching Mary Poppins

Jiggledy, giggledy
Iconic Dick Van Dyke
guffawed and chortled up
into the air
Proving that laughter is
better than medicine
Hyperhysterically
beyond compare

©Molly Hogan

Also, if you haven’t had a chance to watch the Coldplay video, here it is.

It took me a while to get around to it, but I finally watched the whole thing, and it was definitely worth it. It was moving and delightful! Enjoy!

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tricia at her blog The Miss Rumphius Effect. You’re sure to find more moving and delightful things there, so hurry on over!

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January 2025

I woke at 1:15 am on Thursday morning, feeling flutters of panic. My mind was going a mile a minute, pinballing from raging wildfires to taking over the Panama Canal to an ongoing family medical crisis, and all points in between. Then it got fully sucked into the political/cultural maelstrom of Donald Trump, his cronies and the collective insanity: Greenland, the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, revoking vaccines, etc. We’re taking this too calmly, I thought. We laugh at Trump’s insane utterings, or roll our eyes. Where is our outrage? How do we show it? Why aren’t we taking to the streets? What do I need to do to stand up NOW?

On this early morning when I can’t bury my head in daily life, I’m scared about what might come next. My thoughts skitter away from a book I’m reading about small town Germany during Hitler’s rise. How initially so much seemed slightly ridiculous–the pomp, the posturing, etc. And then later, it wasn’t. And by then, it was too late.

I’m scared that we’ll keep letting things slide until it’s too late. That we are relying on our democracy to hold fast. But our democratic system feels battered and bruised and severely undermined. Will it hold strong? If we ignore these small initial mad sparks, and don’t feed them oxygen, will they burn out? Or are we ignoring early sparks that could lead to out-of-control wildfires? It feels like the latter. It feels like we’re on the precipice of disaster. Especially at 1:15 am on a Thursday morning.

After spiraling for a while, I finally decide (in desperation) to change my neural channels by reading (not the historical fiction book I mentioned). I grab my Kindle, pull the covers up and over my head, and read. And read. And read. Until about 4:15 am. Then I sleep for about 15 more minutes before getting up for the day.

My notebook entries from that morning are dreamy and disjointed. And dark. I jotted down my Wordle guesses, as usual, to use as a word pool. When I write what I call a Wordle poem, I typically try to use all the words and keep them in order. This time I omitted one word (water) and shifted the order of the first two words.

My Wordle guesses: weary, wreak, waver, water, wafer

January 2025

Each day wreaks more havoc
I am bone weary
on the brink
of this morning
I waver
watch the sun stutter
then tip
up and over the horizon
a thin wafer of hope
melting away
into a bleak day

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Kat Apel.

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PF: My Skin–no longer unappreciated

This month’s Inkling challenge was posed by Heidi Mordhorst. She invited us to revisit her multi-prompt Yuletide challenge from last year. After some waffling and general indecisiveness, I returned to the prompt “Appreciate a taken-for-granted part of your body.” As always, I wish I had more time to tinker, especially with the pacing (and the title…sigh! lol), but here it is in its current iteration:

My Skin

Back when it was young and taut
and no hairs grew where they ought not,
I wish I’d known to note skin’s glow
its suppleness, its easy flow
how it encompassed all of me,
was neither creped nor wiggly.

Once long ago it held so firm,
protecting me from sun and germ.
Yet now it’s wrinkled on my hands
a relief map of life’s demands,
with rough terrain and darkened patches,
gullies, gulches, deep crevasses.
It waterfalls above my knees
and dimples up beneath my sleeves.
My skin, long unappreciated,
evolved from smooth to corrugated.

Still finally I’ve seen the worth
of this companion, mine since birth.
This skin, a silent troubadour,
with tales to tell of times before.
Blue-hued scar above my knee
reminds of past catastrophe.
Age spots whisper sunny tales
and eyes are framed by laughter’s gales.
For fast as youth faded away
skin journalled every passing day.

©Molly Hogan, draft

If you want to check out what the other Inklings have done with this challenge, click on the links below.

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Catherine @ Reading to the Core (She’s opting out this week, but her blog is always worth a visit!)

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Mary Lee, so you can both enjoy her response and simultaneously find your way to more poetry. Win! Win!

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What Shall I Pack in the Box Marked Winter

I was inspired by a recent contest to write a rhyming poem about winter. The poem didn’t make the cut, but I had great fun writing it and now I have a Poetry Friday post. I call that a double win! I’m actually still playing with it, but here it is in its current version:

What Shall I Pack in the Box Marked Winter 
after Bobbi Katz

Newly bare branches patchworking the sky
Echoes of geese after migrating by
The first chilly breeze that tasted of snow
A flurry of flakes in a hypnotic flow
Waking to snow fallen thick through the night–
A snow day, a free day, a winter delight
Boisterous sledding, mad race down the hills
the laughter, the screaming, the thrills and the spills
Building a snowman with cold carrot nose
bent twiggy arms and a lopsided pose 
Laughing out clouds on a still, frigid day
watching them form, then drift slowly away
Damp mittens, hot cocoa and fresh, rosy faces
The welcome-home warmth coming in from cold places
Cold window panes etched with lacy frost flowers
Snuggling close through white-blanketed hours
The early night darkness and quiet to read
Space for the dreamers and dreams to take seed

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise. Be sure to stop by and check out her cheerful mash-ups! In the meantime, enjoy all the wonders that winter brings your way!

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Winter Light

I was the one to set this month’s challenge for the Inklings. I took part of a prompt from James Crews’s new book, “Unlocking the Heart,” and invited everyone to “begin with a specific sensory experience (of taste, sight, smell, sound or touch) and see where that leads you.”

Weeks after setting this challenge, it occurs to me that a wide-open prompt can be more difficult to enter into than a more defined one. Too many choices, maybe? I suppose it’s like the way that writing within a tightly structured form can actually free ideas. Maybe they bounce off the boundaries and meet up with each other in new and unexpected ways? At any rate, I was hoping to tap in to some evocative smell or sound or even texture (an ode to oatmeal?), but over and over I kept coming back to sight.

To me, winter is all about the interplay between dark and light. There’s such a lush generosity to the light at this time of year. It is transformative. As a photographer and a writer and a human being, I’m drawn to it over and over again. I find it quite challenging to capture both in words and in photographs, but here are a few unrelated small poems and photos attempting to do so:

within deepest snow
winter’s cold heart
blazes a brilliant blue

patient square of amber light
awaits in the dark, chill night
welcome home

late sun gilds the meadow
winter-bare oak tree
glows like an alleluia

You can check out what the other Inklings did with the challenge by clicking on the links below:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Catherine @ Reading to the Core (She’s opting out this week, but her blog is always worth a visit!)

Carol is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Apples in My Orchard.

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PF: Kindling the light with small poems

I’ve been trying to fashion small poems lately. To root through the ashes and find small sparks, then breathe on them gently like kindling, hoping to ignite a flame, to create a little light. I like to write Wordle poems sometimes, but one day this past week my guesses wrote a very succinct poem without any tinkering from me:

That wasn’t quite what I was going for, but who am I to reject a poem when it’s staring me in the face?

Here are a few other poems from this week:

fire warm at my back
coffee in hand
gold on the horizon

©Molly Hogan

jays bombard the feeder
the view fractures, shifts, renews
kaleidoscope blues

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Ruth at her blog, There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town.

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November Challenge

Poorly Chosen Craft Move

Conferences plus Covid
alliterative perhaps
but assuredly not poetic

Ugh! So, there’s some context for you. I’ve been swimming in conferences, fever, unplanned absences, cancelled conferences, sub plans, election angst, rescheduled conferences, cancelled rescheduled conferences, etc. And although I can now smell, I still have a very limited range of taste. Somehow, that just seems to be the sour icing on this unpleasant cake I’ve been consuming. But, on the bright side, I’m getting better (yay!), I only have two more conferences to make up, and Linda set us a lovely challenge for the month. Thank goodness for writing friends and challenges!

For our Inklings challenge, Linda shared Joy Harjo’s poem, “Fall” and asked us to respond to it in any way we chose. For some reason (in the midst of fever perhaps?), it seemed like a good idea to print out the entire poem, cut apart the words and then use every single one, some still in phrases, to write a new poem. So, that’s what I tried to do. It was a mixed success.

Ultimately, I took that poem and removed some words and phrases away to come up with this. Every word in this poem is in Harjo’s poem (unless I’ve lost track!), but I’ve chopped out quite a few. Mostly it still feels a bit fever-dreamy to me.

In the Aftermath of Lament

With you on my mind
I cry a forever blue song,
another hanging perfectly
in a necklace of days.

Sky is slightly overcast.
A jay is there again.
The divine yellow leaves
now dark, damp,
a jacket for the earth,
might open the hallway
into this day.

If I need forward,
if I hear the rain,
will your story keep in mine?

©Molly Hogan

To see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on their names:

Catherine Flynn
Mary Lee Hahn
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon
Linda Mitchell

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Patricia J. Franz at her blog.

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Some Wordle Poems

There’s just something about a random group of words that inspires me to connect some dots and create a poem. In other words, I’ve been playing around with Wordle poems again. They’re such a fun, low-stakes way to keep myself writing. In general, my rules are to use all the words I guess when playing Wordle, in order, within the poem. Variations on the words are okay. Here’s one I wrote with these words from a recent game: gutsy, dream, pearl, farer, carve.

On This Morning

With a hopeful, gutsy stride
I step from my dreams,
cradling the pearl of wisdom
granted to all wayfarers
who travel the currents of night:
The day is open before you
Carve your own way
Always seek the light.

©Molly Hogan

Late last month I was inspired by this photo of a friend’s sister’s newly painted porch. Isn’t it gorgeous!?

It was obviously in my mind when I started playing Wordle a few days later, so I began guessing with the word “porch”. Usually I put my Wordle word guesses in the poem in the order in which I guessed them, but this time I moved them around a little. My words were: porch, clone, cloud.

“My house is where I like to be …”
Daniel Pinkwater*
for Jules Myers

No clone to convention,
she painted her porch
a stirring orange.

Now she’ll sit
amidst sunbeams,
contentedly watching
the clouds drift by.

©Molly Hogan

This line is borrowed from Daniel Pinkwater’s book “The Big Orange Splot”, which is a huge favorite of mine. Any other fans of Mr. Plumbean out there?

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Jama at her blog, Jama’s Alphabet Soup. She’s celebrating all things donut in a scrumptious post! Be sure to check it out and the other links you’ll find there.

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Pythagorean Poem

Margaret posed us a doozy of an Inkling challenge this month. She shared a new poetry form, called a Pythagorean Poem, created by Shari Green. Here’s the description she shared,

“Pythagoras’ theorem is a2 + b2 = c2. One possible “triple” is 3, 4, 5.
3×3 + 4×4 = 5×5
9  +   16  =  25

Using the triple, the poetic form works like this:
1st stanza: 3 lines of 3 words each
2nd stanza: 4 lines of 4 words each
3rd stanza: 5 lines of 5 words each, and this third stanza must be composed of all the words found in stanzas one and two (in any order; variations okay). The third stanza should be a progression of sorts, a product of the first two in thought or theme or meaning.”

Easy-peasy, right? Eep!

Writing this poem felt like a construction process, and one in which I finally ended up deciding to live with the result at a certain stage, even if it didn’t quite match the vision in my mind. In the final somewhat desperate construction stages (deadline approaching!), I turned to the computer to color code words to keep track. It ended up looking like this:

Early Morning Trip to the Marsh

Alarm rings and
dreams fade away
scattered like floss

Mirror, later, reflects fatigue
I splash water, refresh,
feel the day’s energy
seep into my veins

Later, like a mirror, water
reflects scattered floss and I
feel fatigue seep away. My
veins dream. The day’s energy splashes,
refreshes. Alarm fading into rings…

©Molly Hogan, draft

What I was thinking of as I wrote

Here are my final thoughts on writing this poem:

Pythagorus

This polymath known through the ages
was surely the wisest of sages.
His hypoteneuses
still guide building crews as
they construct skyscrapers in stages.

But when building a poem, I must say
his ideas lead from stable to sway.
Though I build a strong base
with each word in its place
true coherence keeps slipping away.

©Molly Hogan

Thanks, Margaret, for the challenge!

If you want to see what the other Inklings did with it, please check on these links:

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core
Heidi Mordhorst @ My Juicy Little Universe
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

Then, head over to Poetry Friday! The wonderful Tabatha Yeatts is hosting this week at her blog, The Opposite of Indifference.

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Next Time…

This month Mary Lee offered up our monthly challenge. She asked us to use the poem “Next Time” by Joyce Sutphen as an inspiration to write our own “next time” poem.

There’s something so evocative about that phrase: “next time.” It incorporates both a sense of regret and a sense of hope. It offers a chance to “re-do” and intimates that there will be a time and place for doing so. Paradoxically, it seems to hold both the possibility of agonizing over mistakes (perceived or real) and/or of anticipating redemption.

For some reason, I really struggled to wrap my head around responding to this challenge. I’ve stopped and started again and again. I’ve played with tone and topic, writing and rewriting. The phrase has lived in my head like a resounding echo: “Next time…next time…next time…” Still, despite many starts, I’ve struggled to come up with one coherent poem.

At this point, I’m already late posting, so I’m cobbling together a few strands from my fits and starts, and hoping they hold together, however draftily.

Next Time

I won’t mourn
the hummingbird’s absence
whilst it still lingers in my garden. 

I won’t spend too long lingering
in the past or the future.
I’ll take the hike, dive into the sea,
read the book and write the poem.
I’ll focus on creating a here and now
to savor.

Next time, I’ll learn earlier about perspective–
how shifting your lens
can change the world from frightening
to exciting, bringing new views
and understandings.

I’ll embrace each challenge, enjoy the process,
buckle up and ride the highs and lows
of the learning curve, leaning into faith, 
rather than fearing failure’s stain.

Next time, I’ll wear that stain
like a badge of honor
a proud proclamation that I
didn’t settle into complacency,
nestling too deeply into
my comfort zone.

I’ll also know
the comfort zone isn’t a bad place
to linger for a while.
It just shouldn’t become
a permanent residence.

Next time I won’t be seduced by comfort
or become paralyzed
in a web of “what if’s” and worries.
I’ll turn a deaf ear to the siren’s call
of safety and perfection, boldly
ignore the neat restraints of convention
and step forward to spread my wings.

Even if I only flap wildly
or fly in an ungainly manner
even if I never soar…
I’ll try.
Next time.

©Molly Hogan, draft

If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @Another Year of Reading
Catherine @ Reading to the Core
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Buffy Silverman at her blog. She’s offering a sneak peek into her soon-to-be-released book, Starlight Symphony. Be sure to stop by and take a look at this gorgeous book and check out some other poetry links while you’re there.