Tag Archives: Wordle

After the Storm: Wordle 549 For Sunday Whirl

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After the Storm

My former blithe spirit is rocked by the rain,
but I’ll dry it out and use it again.

I fold up my heart and tuck it away
in case I should need it some future day.

The lingering legs of love walk the floor
long after the time he walked out the door.

Preferring the narrows, the reefs and the gales
to the calm of safe harbors, his  ship stretched  its sails.

Now he sits in a vase, secure on my shelf,
while I pace in seclusion, all by myself.

The Sunday Whirl prompt words are: ship lingering legs instead narrow stretch door heart vase fold rocked rain

Night and Day

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Night and Day

I memorize your face, your hair,
your breath white light upon cold air.
Hours pass like minutes while
I chart the borders of your smile.

A wisp of cloud, sliver of moon
slip behind the highest dune.
The stars have plans that drive the night
to plots that I will later write.

Fictions Imagined by me,
no match for their reality.
Then, sun rays sent to ban the night
obscure the moon and stars from sight.

A chiming bell is morning’s crime
dispelling pleasures most sublime,
but if I linger long, I might
survive the day to earn the night.

Prompts are: sliver breath sent plans hours minutes chime drive write light crime match for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 548

Sargasso Sea: Wordle 547

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Sargasso Sea

Your fingertips trace patterns on my open palms,
moons on my forearms, stars on my shoulders.
You void the aches and tensions of a stressful day,
unconsciously skim over borders where no lesser traveler
would be allowed to go. Remote places become your territory.

Strong lines develop where you’ve lightly traced.
The Captain Cook of seduction,
you have skirted my boundaries, charted my seas.
Now my waters part before you and welcome you in—
complicit prisoner of my Sargasso Sea.

 

 

The Sunday Whirl Wordle prompts today are: remote unconsciously cook tracing moon patterns strong star void over fingertips lines, Photos by Birmingham Muse and Nick Moore on Unsplash.

Words Written in Stone

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Words Written in Stone

Facing death is difficult—that slowing of our pace
as we approach a barrier we aren’t ready to face.
I dread that last inscription of letters scribed in stone—
that final epistle denoting me alone.

No food or books or flowers will I see from here above,
so bring me no mementos—no tokens of our love.
You cannot drag me down again with psychic or with seer.
No vigil will reclaim me. There’s no way to bring me near.

We’ll have no tongue between us, no language will we share.
You cannot climb a ladder composed of only air,
and I can’t descend from where I’ll be, and so my dear, accept
your fresh life that is nourished by these tears that you have wept.

.

Prompt words for Wordle 544 of the Sunday Whirl
are: book ways vigil death memento drag letters inscription barrier tongue climb face.

Toyless: Wordle 543

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Toyless

We are refugees from childhood and the gadgets from the past,
for hula hoops are out of date and Play-Doh doesn’t last.
No bean bags soar toward targets. No Pop-Its crack and hiss.
Millions of Wooly Willys will forever miss
their metal filing hairdos and, it’s true, what’s more,
pump-handle tops won’t spin away to whirl across the floor.

Potatoes doomed to peeling and slicing up for fries
miss Mr.Potato Head’s hats and ears and eyes.
Down what timeworn corridors have all our past lives fled?
Where are all the vestiges of playtimes that we led?
How can we track our losses when toy store staffs insist
that the treasures of our past, alas, do not exist?

Davy Crocket Coonskin caps no longer are the rage.
Beanie caps with propellers are not worn at any age.
Peashooters aren’t in evidence. Nor is Silly Putty.
Give a kid a Milking Cow and they’ll think you are nutty. 
No slinkies climb down stair steps. No Hungry Hippos snap.
No Cabbage Patch Kids hang around to share a toddler’s nap.

Our childhood pleasures are passé. We may as well admit it.
All the things that we found fun? New kids just do not get it!

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, prompts for this week are:
target fled millions live crack last refugee corridor gadgets losses staff track

Turning the Tables

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Turning the Tables

The turtle stuck his neck out to see where he was going,
but might have hidden in his shell if he had means of knowing

that the chef had plans for turtle soup, so caught him at the threshold
and put his hands around his neck so he could gain a flesh hold.

But such plans “gang aft astray.” The turtle put a spin on
and designed a different course from  one that he had been on.

He dragged that gourmet chef along and headed for the sea.
Their noise of battle was the thing that awakened you and me.

We put our vinyl raincoats on and fiddled with the locks,
scooting feet into our shoes, devoid of any socks.

No moonlight eased our journey, for rainclouds obscured all,
and amidst the raindrops, we commenced to slip and fall.

Around us, many turtles were streaming towards the sea,
intent upon their journey. Ignoring you and me.

So we turned back homeward, to sit upon our stoop
imagining those turtles enjoying human soup.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: turtle neck shell hidden
but design no spin fiddle amidst noise vinyl

For Wordle 542 Image by Dusan Veverkolog on Unsplash.

Bedtime Stories: Wordle 541

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Bedtime Stories

When I hear scuffling in the ceiling and scratching in the wall,
fluttering at the windows and steps out in the hall,
Mommy says it’s mice and birds to calm my excitation,
but Daddy tells me other things that swell imagination.

There are ghost doors in the attic and temples in the sky
that creatures will spring out of to join me by and by.
My dad will weave their stories and spread them out for me.
He’ll just open up his mouth and that will set them free.

When I think of all the stories, there’s such anticipation
that I can feel my heart boom and hear its palpitation.
Nighttime is less scary with Mommy or with Nurse,
but bedtime without stories is definitely worse.

 

The prompt words are: temples fluttered ghost door spring mouth weaving stories step boom sky scuffling for Sunday Stills Wordle 541  Illustration by Marloes Hilckman on Unsplash.

New Puppy: The Sunday Whirl 540

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New Puppy

She’s distracted in a heartbeat by a petal or a stone.
No errant tuft of grass is ever left alone.
She does battle with the gate, makes fairy trails through sand,
makes a complicated plaything of a single human hand.

The spill of lacy shadows by the sun above the trees,
the ticking of a clock or the slightest little breeze
all demand attention. There’s no limit to the things
that become her playthings: bottles, fingers, strings.

Only sunset brings a finish to frenetic hours of play.
There is a certain surcease, finally, at the end of day.
But 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. and 6.a.m. again
mark hours when new playtimes are scheduled to begin.

Prompt words today are: sunset finish  string spill heartbeat trails  tick stone gate

For The Sunday Whirl 540 Wordle

Sue Bee Honey: Wordle 538, Jan 30, 2022

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Sue Bee Honey

Once a year, their trucks would leave trails through our fields of sweet clover and my father returned from the fields with  combs of honey still in their wooden frames, dripping rich streams that blackened the dust of  the sidewalk between the back driveway and the porch, where he propped them up against the porch railing to drain into huge clay bowls.

Sue Bee Honey, rich and golden and speckled with tiny corpses of the bees who made it. Those two purloined combs were the price he exacted for allowing them to put their hives onto our land. I swear I could smell that honey on the wind long before he brought it back to share with the family—our year’s supply that we would filter through screens to remove broken bits of wax and bee bodies and pour into bottles to line a foot-long space on the narrow shelves of the pantry.

I remember breaking off a piece of the broken comb to chew like sugared gum—sweet July memories of summer as well as later memories of the silken feel of that honey trailed onto hot buttered corn muffins in the morning. It solved my winter hunger for sweet and fueled me up for a morning of  books and chalkboards and sharpened pencils on blue-lined rough yellow paper.

 

The prompt words  for  The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 538 are: broken silk dust leaving truck family sign hunger wind books honey and black. Two of the images are by  Alisa Reutova and Mariana Ibanez  on Unsplash.

Now and Then: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning: Wordle 537

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Now and Then

In cracking the present to reveal the past,
it shimmers, triumphant, expansively vast.
I tend to remember the moments most happy—
successful and positive, silly and sappy,
but when I remember it using a filter,
it leans to one side, completely off-kilter.

The same number of memories from days gone by
if remembered at all, are recalled with a sigh.
I reach into my heart and remember again
the more negative moments of days that have been.
Then I quiver with passions, now full of dejection
of the losses and failures  and pains of rejection

It’s the way of the world to give us one day
what in the future it will take away,
but nonetheless, we must live for the present
and accept all it offers—both painful and pleasant.
When we pin all our thoughts on past sadness and fun,
We fasten ourselves to a life that’s undone.

This is my answer to John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

The Sunday Whir Wordle 537 prompts are: undone cracking triumph expansive reach quiver shimmering filter way reveal sigh moment