Tag Archives: Poetry Friday

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Chillin’ in the Big Easy

It’s February break and we headed south in search of a little warmth…

It hasn’t turned out exactly as we’d hoped.

Unfortunately, we brought Maine temperatures with us, along with a gusty wind. Brrrrrrr!!!! You’d think we’d be used to it! Regardless of the cold (thank goodness for layers!!!), we’re having a lovely time. And luckily, after thick clouds and misty rain on Wednesday, yesterday was sunny, so we had that going for us!

With the temperatures so low, it’s been odd to see green leaves and blooms. The majestic oaks, with their twisted limbs and long winter shadows, dazzle me. I have been feeling a little bad for the magnolias though. They look so cold!

grey clouds scud
in a winter-frosted breeze
blossoms tremble

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Laura Purdie Salas, and she’s sharing all sorts of exciting book news. I’m still traveling, but hope to get around to read and comment over the next few days.

PS A highlight of the trip–hanging out with Margaret and Jeff Simon and parade watching!

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An image, a new-to-me word, and a limerick

Have you heard of the Public Domain Image Archive ? Well, if you haven’t, carve out some time and go visit. It’s amazing! Mary Lee introduced us to the site for our challenge and invited us to type a color into the search bar and write about one of the images that popped up. After a bit of playing around (and a lot of time passing!), I entered peach and was regaled with this image of a water tower in Gaffney, South Carolina.

Oh, my.

That’s what I thought, too.

So, while looking up synonyms for butts, I discovered the new-to-me word “callipygian”.

And that’s how this limerick came to be.

Down in Gaffney they sing a proud paean
to this tower that’s oddly protean.
They exclaim, “It’s a peach!”
Tourists claim that’s a reach–
it’s decidedly callipygian!

©Molly Hogan

Check out what the other Inklings did with this challenge by clicking on their links:

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 

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link.

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A Burst of Color

I can’t imagine living year long in a temperate climate. I love all the seasons, and they connect me to life and nature in a deep and meaningful way. Or at least they do when I pay attention. I’ve often thought that seasons heighten my awareness of time passing, which is bittersweet, but also valuable. In a weirdly related way, it’s why I’ve never colored my hair (okay, other than a temporary glaze a few times).

I love winter for so many reasons. One simple one is that, to my eyes at least, it’s simply stunning. I’m drawn to the stark contrasts of light and dark. To the beauty of snow and ice and to the grace of bare tree branches. Winter is filled with subtle mysteries. It offers up the bones of the world, and exposes things in new ways.

Still, sometimes I find myself wishing for a little color. Recently, on a freezing, not-much-snow-around-this-January day, an image popped up in my Facebook feed :

It was a painting by artist, Jane Dahmen, entitled “River Landscape.” Viewing this landscape with its vibrant colors felt like a detonation. They fed something in me that I hadn’t even realized was hungry.

On Viewing “River Landscape” in Winter

I yearn to lick vermilion patches like lollipops,
feel their red and orange scratch
and splash on my tongue,
absorb the bold bursts of amber and pine
into the stream of my cold, sluggish blood.

Oh! to grab dripping handfuls
of effervescent blue
raise them to my nose
and inhale the coursing river,
let it ripple down my throat
anointing all lying dormant within.

Surrounded by a landscape
swathed in grays and whites,
I feast.

©Molly Hogan, draft

Until spring arrives with its shy greening and tentative bursts of color, I’ll continue to drink from winter’s chilly brew. It remains delicious.

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by the effervescent Jan at her blog bookseedstudio. Be sure to stop by and warm up with the poetry goodness on offer!

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Something You Should Know

People often wonder how my husband and I ever got together. How we ever lasted over 35 years. Sometimes, it’s a mystery to me as well, but I’m always thankful. He is a man who defies description, but describes himself as a “hippie, red-neck philosopher.” He would be the first to admit that he has some rough edges, but he is a man to admire–someone who works hard at being his best self. He makes me a better person, too. He turned 60 recently and I wrote this poem for him.

Something you should know
(After Clint Smith)

is that I find your hands beautiful.

I know you’ll laugh when you read this,
hold up your knobby hands,
rippled with callouses and scars
of unknown origins,
thick-fingered with nails bitten
into deformity
These hands? you’ll ask.

Yes, those hands,
your hands
I find them beautiful.
Achingly so.
How they cradled our children
How they dance across my skin
How I know they will be there
when I reach out with mine.

And how those quick-bitten nails
record the unceasing effort,
the struggle you put
into living your best life
every single day.

Heroism at its most fundamental.

Beautiful.

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tabatha at her blog, The Opposite of Indifference.

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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.