Tag Archives: Wordle

Calamity’s Knell (For Wordle 610)

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Calamity’s Knell

As the final school bell rang,
the riddle of that tiny bang,
the whimper as I shut the door,
made me wonder all the more
what had happened as I ran
to try to beat the truant man.

He clenched his jaw and cleared his throat,
I knew that I had got his goat
as I reached the child-sized split
‘tween frame and door and barely fit
to squeeze myself into the school,
thereby proving students rule!

By rights, he couldn’t count me late
so long as I had made the gate.
Peace reigned, then, for all afternoon,
but soon I’d sing a different tune
as I got home to see our mutts
had dined on all the cashew nuts
my aunt brought home from her vacation
for my family’s mastication.

Miserably, I confessed
I bumped the table and made the mess
as I rushed off to school blind
to the spilled nuts I’d left behind.
Such chaos comes from tardy fools
who live adjacent to their schools
and wrongly think that they excel
at winning races with the bell!

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 610  the word prompts are: miserably nuts peace rights blind jaw throat tiny bang whimper fit riddle

Mutability for The Sunday Swirl, June 18, 2023

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Mutability

My life is spinning open to spring beyond my grasp,
unsecured by hardware of loop or bar or hasp.
Hope lifts to wing with feathers spreading in its flight,
springing into the future until it’s out of sight.

By what am I driven that I have set Hope free,
to reach out beyond me, perhaps that it might see
all that I desire beyond the status quo
of the lives that I have lived—the truths I’ve claimed to know?

Life in the guise of here and now, of Heaven or of Hell,
is a man-made legend that we know too well.
But when the death knell chimes for us, what new truth might we learn?
Will we face those pearly gates or will we slowly burn?

Might we go on to distant worlds so far that we can’t see—
orbs turning in another realm where we have come to be
in another shape or form, another turn of mind?
And will we still be our own selves when newly redefined
as bird or beast or creature heretofore unseen—
just one more ghostly image cast on time’s flickering screen?

The prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 509 are: hope feathers flight sight guise desire chime beyond spinning open springs drive. Image by Jan Tinneburg on Unsplash.

And for dVerse Pets Open Link Night

 

“Summer’s End” for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 608, June 11, 2023

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“Summer’s End”

In the shadows of my past, the crow goes soaring higher,
rising from the creek’s mist to the summer sunset’s fire.

Lately a lonely sentinel at the barn’s far peak,
it filters time now through its wings, the past held in its beak.

Yes, I still remember it belting its harsh caw
as it lifted in the air with summer in its maw.

Tomorrow the first day of school, it marked vacation’s end.
As lazy water in the creek meandered ’round the bend,

bound to some deep forest, far from this boundless plain,
I watched free careless summer vanish once again.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 608 the words are: mist creek belt shadows forest summer still rising crow filters time sentinel
Image from Juneau Alaska on Unsplash.

“Three Words” Wordle 607 for The Sunday Whirl

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Three Words

Words shake loose like feathers from my morning head,
ascending, then descending to my night-tossed bed.
Caught here between dreams and thought, I try to lift a hand
to capture words before they have a chance to land.

I find I’ve cupped a poem, but then I set it free,
hoarding just three words that I have saved for thee.
It’s words that build the roads that storytellers  pave—
like the one I build for you out of  the words I save.

I seek to pull your love to me by my words’ emotion
rather than by trickery or by magic potion.
These simple words are everything that I choose to say.
Pressed into your palm, they beckon, “Come this way.”

Words for Wordle 607 are: ascending morning head dreams between hand road storytellers poem potion feather three

Day and Night, For Wordle 603

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Day and Night

Every night when you emerge to climb down from your heart
and shed your daily mystery, you become a part
of what we were before they clashed—my daily life and yours—
before I rubbed against your nerves  and you shut certain doors.
The very night bows down to gather round the slivered moon,
arched lighter on the verge of it, celebrating June.
You forsake your manly bearing and go against your grain,
show flashes of your tenderness that I’ve sought out in vain.
This is our nightly honeymoon that makes the day a breeze,
limbering up the stiffness and thawing out the freeze.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 603 the prompts are: heart you emerge night climb bow grain mystery clash flashes verge bearing The photo is of Rosemary and Jim, both now sadly departed. They were not a couple but I love this photo and thought it formed a good illustration for the poem.

Love Story After Rain, for NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 25 and Wordle 319

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Love Story After Rain

If I had a penny for each
of all my thoughts of you,
my dear, I’d buy us lollipops
for one hand,
yellow tulips for the other

and as the rainbows disappear,
replaced by brighter clouds,
stay near—
together
as we have been wont to do,

everybody else
disappearing
except us,
your sunshine drying
up the puddles.

Do not seek to join us,
world,
We are enough—
sticky-tongued

with pollen
clinging
to our lips and fingers,
silly grins.

Love story after rain.

For Wordle 319 the prompt words are: sunshine lollipops rainbows disappear join stay near penny together brighter cloud everybody

Also, for NaPoWriMo, the prompt challenges us to write a love poem, one that names at least one flower, contains one parenthetical statement, and in which at least some lines break in unusual places.

“Nightmares,” for Wordle 601

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Nightmares

One night out of ten I ride these ghostly horses.
They toss their heads and whinny as they take me through their courses.
They are the wandering skeletons of a bygone life
when I was a child or when I was a wife.
They remind me of my promises and break them once again,
replay all the suffering of places I have been.
They point out what I wanted and what I didn’t get,
relate every failure and recall every debt.
They nightly make me prisoner and make me walk the walk.
They bring me to my knees, my head upon the block
as my past life streams before me and I listen to the chatter
of all those bygone comments I was convinced didn’t matter.
How I dread their hoofbeats, these horses of the night,
and how glad I am they vanish with the coming of the light.

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 601 the prompts are: block call promise dreams stream life wandering skeletons want knees suffering listen

Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

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Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

That fly that chose to falter
for a minute on the altar
I’d constructed for my lover
should have made the choice to hover.

The worst choice of all
was to choose to land and crawl
attracting my attention
to a means of his detention.

Namely, to kill the squatter
with a switch of my fly swatter.
Though he was silent ever after,
no more soaring floor and rafter,

it was I who did the gasping,
for the bottle he was clasping
of my mourned-ones favorite drink
soared out to shatter in the sink.

Thus in the battle between darter
and me, he was the martyr
while I strained my funny bone
accepting actions to atone

by cleaning glass shards from the table
and all places I was able
to reach within the kitchen
without grumbling and bitchin’.

Then I quickly made a trip
to buy a sticky strip
so future flies would be defeated
and my actions not repeated.

 

Prompts For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 600
are: bones gasping strip switch shatters battle fly altar martyr bottle crawl falter

Also for NaPoWriMo

Re-Generation, Wordle 592

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Re-Generation

Once I realized culture owned me, still I had no will to change,
for alternate modes of living are so hard to arrange.
Yet I set out to mold me to be different from the crowd
and I have done so well at it that I admit I’m proud.

First I got a nose ring and then I got tattooed.
I push my way up to the front where formerly I queued.
Whereas once I used the phrase that “You’re so very very,”
I finally invested in the Urban Dictionary.

So while I was once “with it,” now finally I’m so “dope,”
that this former Boomer will soon be Gen Z, I hope.
I regret all those years when I pressed front seams in my jeans,
but now that I have shredded them, I feel I’m in my teens.

Now that I’m a “meme”ing master and Snap Chat is a snap,
I’m expert in my dissing and I’ve reversed my cap.
Now that I have changed so much,  I feel I’m at my best
in becoming different exactly like the rest!!

 

For the Sunday Whirl 592 the prompt words are: culture realized owned first proud change me here dictionary

 

The Old Homestead: For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 590

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Dad’s family at homestead. My sister Betty in front.

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

The first photo is of my grandparents and two aunts and their families. The third photo is my dad and his cousins, my grandmother Jane and her sister Susie and my oldest sister Betty Jo as a child.

The Old Homestead

Its barn is thick with echoed thrust
of wings long faded into dust.
The barn owl hunts no rodent ghosts,
no drumming wings the still air boasts.

Those boards you walked now topped with blooms
of mildew, mold and wild mushrooms
that cling and spread and flood the room
with peaceful quiet and sombre gloom.

What footfalls that you might have made
are soon absorbed and so they fade.
Your presence, vital long ago
barely interrupts the flow

of time that passes here so slow.
No lowing cattle, no rooster’s crow.
No bleat of lamb, no donkey’s bray.
All that once was has passed away.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 590 the prompt words are: barns thick clung topped blooms walked spread drumming faded hunt peace floods