Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: spiral craft signal draft shallow rule dense send shell sham slapping laugh
“Life” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 719, Aug 17, 2025
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Tag Archives: Wordle
“Family Stories” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 718, Aug 10, 2025
Ben Dykstra (My dad) age 13.
Family Stories
My father’s stories were not tales of moral principles or prophecy,
but rather reenactments of his roots—
tales of the open endless prairie
and the characters who peopled it.
Mirrors reflecting what seemed to me
to be a distant past:
forays to neighboring town dances
(told in the voice of Deafie Sterner)
to “See the leetle women.”
Tales of Hank Jarneck, Cousin Louie
and Grandma’s liniment cake.
Accounts of gray wolves, prairie fires,
children lost in winter blizzards
and reenactments of the voices of the wind
whistling through wall planks
and around the door during a winter blizzard.
In those days of my childhood before travel,
they presented a way to journey through time—
leading me back to my father’s roots—
allowing him to make those memories last
through another generation.
The debris of his life’s past
thus building the foundation
of mine.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 718 the words are: voices time story debris present
lead doors roots prophecy last mirror
“Souvenirs” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 717, Aug 3, 2025
Souvenirs
Not all souvenirs are ones that we can touch––
statues, postcards, T-shirts, baskets, rings and such.
We buy such things to crack the windows to the past
to try to free those memories that we know won’t last.
Yet memory itself is a siren that can free
remembrance in melodies that we cannot see
except in mental echoes that come wave after wave,
showing us for free what our mind chooses to save.
Whether they prompt nostalgia to excite or soothe or sting,
deep within our minds are souvenirs of everything.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 717, the prompt words are: souvenirs free touch know cracks siren window waves sting show ring give. Image by Bianca Ackerman on Unsplash.
Catching the Ball for the Sunday Whirl Wordle, July 27, 2025
Catching the Ball
The edge of truth floats shimmering preparing to unveil
behavior we need warnings of that lie beyond the pale.
Strange doings that we should avoid. Actions we should fear.
Dark magic that sparks whispers of dangers far and near.
Beware those creatures of the dark that woo us with their wiles—
shedding their true natures by obscuring them with smiles.
Fortune can be a swift-paced ball. Best catch it in your mitt
lest you forget to reach for it and, instead, get hit.
For the Sunday Whirl, the words are: ball whispers shimmering unveil hits strange shedding edge creature sparks fear magic Image by Benjamin Hershey on Unsplash.
“Missing You” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle #714, July 13, 2025
Missing You
The only true space is that one formerly occupied by your laugh, now missing as my world fills in around me–you missing as a piece of it. I send this letter on a mission to find you and bring you back to face the music and explain why you walked out, fists clenched, never to return, firing your former life and loves to leave us all here, disconsolate, our loneliness brewing that weak decoction that lacks you–the most vital element of our world’s infusion.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle #714 the prompt words are: face fire fists walk brewing back only true space piece mission laugh
“Summer Nights” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle June 29, 2025
Summer Nights
Maneuvered by some radar
through the summer night,
haunted fluttering creatures
are captured by the light,
soaring over the river,
then swooping down to swing
lower to catch tasty
morsels on the wing.
A thousand tiny little eyes
strung out far below,
draw these winged predators
everywhere they go.
Rattlesnakes lie coiled
beside their shed-off skins
far from the pebbled riverbanks,
safe within their dens
as legendary wing tips
flap quietly higher
ripping through the midnight skies
lit by our camping fire.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle the prompt words are: radar string eyes haunted legends swing rattle river skin tip pebble rips
An Apologia for Indolence, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, June 1, 2025
An Apologia for Indolence
Those beasts that prowl the underworld with claws uncoiled to strike
assume the right to wander anywhere they like.
They thread their ways through canyons, all over the map––
through every twisting river’s course, through every mountain gap.
Stuck tight to their temples are their matted strands of hair.
Masked by tree limbs and tall grasses, they maintain their vigilance where
a hunter or a camper or a homeless, shiftless sort
unschooled in the ways of beasts, chooses to cavort.
Thus do those loved ones vanish who choose to exercise
while at home are resting those of us who are more wise!!!
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle, the words are: prowl beast claws shift strands twists wander underworld map thread
Junior Prom, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 708
Junior Prom
Remember your first ball gown floating in the light
of the high school gymnasium, lit up for the night
with stars bound up in streamers and even paper trees
wound around the trellises, leaves swaying in the breeze.
Bare shoulders on each teenage girl, stiff collars on each date
as they enter the prom’s runway with their chosen mate.
Rhinestone crowns fixed firmly to each mounded lock,
with pins that soon go flying to the strains of “Jailhouse Rock.”
Young spirits cool and groovy–feeling they might freak
decades before their need to present themselves as chic.
That one night of fantasy of all nights in the year––
slow music your permission to draw each other near.
For the Sunday Whirl, the words are: remember gown ball runway floating light mound crown bare chic stars spirit
This really is a photo of my junior prom. I’m the one in the shocking red dress and red heels! Looks like everyone else chose pastels and white shoes.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 707, May 18, 2025
Origins
Does our legacy lie buried in altars far below
or in the sky above us in that universal glow
leaving signals of its visits in the shadows of those scars
that are the vestiges of planets or of stars
left by burning meteors that spin their gleaming trains
across the sky before they bury what remains
deep in the earth to rustle and come to rest in earth
and perhaps seed vestiges of an alien birth
so our world thus mimics some world that gleams above.
As we gaze at the heavens, training our thoughts on love,
do we intuit tender mercies that were our beginnings?
Are those specks of stardust our true underpinnings?
Our scientific knowledge breeds pollution and cancer
without ever really giving us an answer
as to what man’s origin was in the beginning
and what led us away from it and to our present sinning.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 707, May 18 2025 the words are: legacy scars altar sky mercy burn mimic rustle gleam gaze shadows train
Davy Jones Locker, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle #706
Davy Jones Locker: Davy Jones’ Locker is a metaphor for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors and shipwrecks. It is used as a euphemism for drowning. Silver coins spilling from a pirate chest seem to be doing these victims of shipwreck at sea no good at all. I collected all of the shells and sand used in this piece from various beaches in Mexico. Even the plastic cup, once claimed by the sea, washed ashore covered in coral.
(Although I created the piece above for an exhibition 5 years ago,
the poem below is new, created for this prompt:)
Davy Jones Locker
Storytellers tell the tales of underwater realms
where sunken ships lie buried with sand up to their helms.
They lie countless fathoms beneath the emerald foam
of oceans only beasts and serpents of the sea call home.
There saints of the underworld have made more novel choices
other than announcing their presence through their voices.
Silver coins rolled to the beach, bones smoothed by ocean tides,
give hints of those deep regions where Davy Jones resides.
His ship now razed by currents that drew it to its death,
the ocean mist still carries vestiges of his breath.
He has become that element that once he sought to best––
a part of that great ocean that was his lifelong quest.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle # 706 the prompt words are: underworld realm beasts raze maps storytellers saints emeralds hood voices serpent mist
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 