Tag Archives: Wordle

“Souvenirs” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 717, Aug 3, 2025

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Cloudburst, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 705

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Cloudburst

Distant sirens justify our sloshing through the mud
to put the chains on tires that are filthy from the crud
of water mixed with father’s choice of topsoil for the garden
that crows have picked and worked at, so it couldn’t harden.
So when the rain comes, clattering the eaves troughs and the shutters,
sending muddy water swirling down the gutters,
there’s a short answer to the puzzle: that necessary bite
of the metal on the tires that will bring us through the night.
Raw courage and pure valor will guide us through the storm
back to our place of solace––safe and dry and warm.

For The Sunday Whirl 705 Wordle, the prompt words are: chain justify sloshing works clatters choice sirens distant crows puzzle short

“Solivagant” For Wordle 704

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Solivagant

I draw grief like a scarf around me, swaying from its force.
The clouds spark electricity, rain flooding from its source
like tears of the whole world that are issued from the sky
as thunder growls its protest that you had to die.

Cradling my memories, the secrets of your charm,
it is as though the hazy air shelters me from harm––
wraps around me like a blanket, as I stumble and I list,
recalling as I walk that It was here that we first kissed.

 

–A solivagant is one who walks alone–a solitary wanderer. Sorry for the fancy word, but it just fit.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 704, Apr 27, 2025 the words are:
grief scarf cradle list growl swaying sky force electricity charm secrets