Tag Archives: Wordle poem

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Wordle Poems

I start every day with Wordle. It’s a guaranteed morning pleasure…and an occasional frustration. I extend the pleasure each morning by gathering up my guesses and trying to create poems from them. It’s a low-stakes and fun way to generate some poetry in my notebook. I find the combination of words can force me to make interesting and surprising connections I would never have considered otherwise. Here are a couple of recent efforts.

Wordle guesses: alter, spell, whelk, wield

To alter your world

emerge from the hypnotic spell
of the in-and-out tide
of the banal.

Spiral your shell
into gorgeous intricacy,
like a whelk
wielding basic elements
to create complex beauty.

©Molly Hogan

Wordle guesses: grace, point, slunk, funny, bunny

Grant yourself grace

when you wish yourself
elsewhere
wonder what’s the point
and why you haven’t
already slunk far away
from the current scene.

It’s a funny thing
how we join the conga line
or bunny hop along with the herd
even as we yearn
for other places
or spaces
for oases of calm.

©Molly Hogan

Thoughts of the bunny hop led me back to happy childhood memories and a bit of a rabbit hole (ha!) on the internet. Enjoy!

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Linda Mitchell at her blog, A Word Edgewise. She’s sharing a delightfully creative December mash-up! Be sure to check it out!

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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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A New Process for a Wordle Poem

WARNING: Spoiler alert!!! If you play Wordle and haven’t yet played today, wait to read this post. This post will reveal the word of the day!!!

I play Wordle every single day. Every so often I write poems from my guessed words. Recently, I’ve been doing this with more frequency. I enjoy having a pool of words to work with and try to combine in interesting ways.

I’m not a huge Wordle strategist. I don’t begin with the same word every time, or worry about vowels. I just wait for a word to strike my fancy. Sometimes it’s my mood, or the weather, or sometimes it’s just a random word winging it’s way into my brain. This morning I started with “tired” (Ok. I’ve definitely begun with that word more than once! Hmmmm….wonder why?) and then I decided to try something new. I would write a line or two for a poem after each guessed word, before taking my next guess. I was intrigued by the idea of not knowing where the poem was going. I’ve bolded my guessed words as they appear.

Tired hums in my veins
It stains my vision
bleaching out color
like a sepia photo
Night has advanced
creating its own home
deep within my bones
I grope for tinder and flint
anything to strike,
to light my way
to point to a path forward
Still, I’m utterly weary
I feel the weight of age
in every joint.

©Molly Hogan

Well, that was a bit dark! Really, I am fine. But even though it’s not the lightest of poems, I did enjoy the process. I suspect this will become a new part of my morning routine. On a side note, I’m not sure if I was disheartened or inspired by having 6 words to work with. It was not a stellar Wordle performance, for sure, but it definitely provided more fodder for a poem. Another upside to writing Wordle poems, I suppose!

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PF: A Wordle Poem

This week has been our winter break, and I’ve had minimal plans and lots of down time. Sometimes that feels good, sometimes not as much. It’s been quite cold in the mornings, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to get up and out. I teeter back and forth on the balance beam between sluggish and relaxed.

Yesterday morning, although the skies promised a humdrum sunrise (is there such a thing, really?), I drove down to watch day begin at the river. I wasn’t the only one appreciating the views.

When I got home, I stopped to feed the birds before heading inside. As I neared the feeders, mourning doves departed in a flurry of feather and sound. A cardinal serenaded me from a nearby tree, and chickadees and crows chimed in. There were a few more unknown calls rounding out the chorus. So much singing!

Soon after coming inside, the morning lured me outside again to wander around my yard, listen to the bird song and try to capture a few photos. I can’t remember how long it had been since I’d done that. Even though it was still cold and none of my photos were particularly inspired, It felt oh-so-good.

When I sat down later for my daily Wordle, my four guesses (in bold) seemed to flow out of the morning and afterward, into this poem:

Today I will drink fresh morning air
inhale rippling bird song
and let both guide me
to build a day
worth remembering

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at her blog The Opposite of Indifference . Be sure to stop by today or any day for some inspiration!

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NPM: Free Choice: A Wordle Poem

I Wordle every morning and every so often I use my word choices for the day to create a poem. Yesterday my word choices were : frame, claim, amass and smash. Here’s my poem:

Curating

Frame your day
with gratitude and awe.
Claim it, name it and hang it on the wall
or on a page
or let it tremble on your lips in praise.
Amass a grand collection.
Smash away the drab, the grey!
Keen your eye to wonder–
frame your day.

©Molly Hogan