Tag Archives: petrichor

Fourteen Minute Challenge

Ever played a word in Scrabble that you didn’t know the meaning of? They acknowledged it as a word but you hadn’t the foggiest? This happened to me a short while ago. The word was siriasis and extra points to you if you know what it means. Quadruple points if you can write a poem making use of it within the next 14 minutes. Here is my 14 minute poem:

 

Rainy Day Reminder

You rue those rainy nights and days
when everything is in a haze
and you cannot go out the door
without whiffing petrichor.
Your hair is soggy, face too ruddy,
raincoat sodden, rain boots muddy.
And suffering from all this damping,
girls are in no mood for vamping.
It’s hard to flirt, I must confess,
when one is such a dripping mess.
But consider now the opposite.
When all day in the sun you sit,
you’ll never find men making passes
at girls who suffer siriasis!

 

(To save you the bother of your looking it up,  siriasis means sunstroke, but it was Bushboy who gave me a hint that led me to investigate the very interesting Australian origins of the word petrichor.)

Dust to Rain

Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Dust to Rain

The world, my dear, is dust to rain
over and over and again.
It is as true as it is sad
that relief cannot be had
unless some travail happens first.
How can we quench unless we thirst?

Those times you go without a trace
of raindrops on your upturned face
give way to petrichor—they must
as finally rain comes down to dust.
Bountiful years follow the drought.
It is the way the world’s planned out.

Grandparents tell their younger kin
that drought is the result of sin
or hurricanes our penance for
those misdeeds the gods abhor.
But this is all mistaken lore
dispelled by whiffs of petrichor.

The prompt words for today were trace, kin, bountiful and petrichor ( the pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions.)

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/rdp-thursday-petrichor/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/08/fowc-with-fandango-trace/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/kin/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/daily-addictions-2018-week-44/bountiful