PAD Day 13: Magic Garden

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a "problem" poem, and (2) "Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned."

I focused again today on memories of my grandparents' house. I'm not sure if I quite captured the spirit of the NaPoWriMo prompt (I wax "old-fashioned" poetic toward the end - I resisted the urge to use the word "gossamer," though), and I made just a nod toward the Write Better Poetry prompt. But for what it's worth:

Grandparents’ Garden
 
Just a small, near-perfect rectangle
of grass out their back door—
to the left, the pink and white roses
she pruned meticulously.
To the right, his garden by the side
of the garage, growing tomatoes
and peppers, red-green rhubarb
and strawberries, the whole plot
edged with marigolds,
because rabbits didn’t like the smell.
He kept the bunnies away,
but she fed the squirrels—
there was one with a limp right ear
she called “Gimpy-ear,” and he
took peanuts right out of her hand.
In the center, a stone birdbath
that the robins and sparrows
would revel in, fluttering wings,
spraying water like a lawn sprinkler.
I spent many summer afternoons
out there, on an Adirondack chair
with a lemonade in hand, any problems
I left back home melting like the ice
in my glass. I would watch
the pines shift in a warm breeze,
and imagined how there must be magic
hidden in those whispering boughs,
how it might come down while we slept,
old-fashioned storybook or poetic magic,
ere Eos painted the morn a sensual red
and birdsong graced the day,
and if I peered out the back window,
I might perchance spy fairies in the birdbath,
translucent wings flashing in the dim,
just before the sun began to show his rim.
 

PAD Day 12: Choo-Choo!

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "set" poem (using any definition of the word you choose), and (2) " write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today."

Did you know that there are over 400 definitions of the word "set" in English? The OED has over 20 pages listing the definitions of that one word. No other English word had more definitions. I believe I once wrote a poem about that, using the word in about 30-plus different ways. I'll have to sort through my body of work to find it. 

Anyway, I thought of "train set," which inspired this poem. Interestingly, it could also fit yesterday's theme of "home."

Little Woodbury
 
I used to dabble in model railroads,
as did my father, and his father before him.
Grandpop had a set of the original Lionels,
solidly made, not an ounce of plastic on them.
He ran the steam locomotive with its loud whistle
and real smoke pouring from its smokestack,
competing with Grandpop’s own pipe.
It pulled a caravan of box cars, coal cars,
cattle cars, gondolas, even passenger cars,
and last but not least, a caboose.
The train traversed a large oval, chugging over a trestle bridge
and through a tunnel in a papier-mâché mountain,
then circled a little village that looked like his hometown.
In fact, he built scale models of the buildings of Woodbury
from cardboard, balsa wood and paint—
the city hall, the hospital, the Methodist church,
the movie theater, advertising The Wizard of Oz,
the diner, the gas station, and several houses,
including his own, a three-bedroom bungalow
he shared with my grandmother, flanked by two
large cedar trees, just a block from the real-life
train station, also represented on his layout.
The town was populated with little ceramic people
and 1930s-style die-cast Fords and Chevys.
I’d spend hours watching that Lionel logging scale miles
around and around little Woodbury, and sometimes
he let me take the controls. Once I asked him,
“Why do so many train sets have oval tracks?”
And he answered, “Because no matter how far you travel,
you always come back home.”
 

 

 

PAD Day 11: Got My Eraser

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "home" poem, and (2)"write your own erasure/blackout poem. You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you....Feel free to maintain the whitespace of the original text (as is traditional for erasures/blackouts . . . if anything can be called traditional about them) or to pluck words/phrases from your chosen source material and rearrange them."

I chose the latter treatment: taking words and phrases out of a source and rearranging them, so I could try a "double tanka" form. My source was a page from the article "The Design Lab" in the March 2026 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It featured the home designs of Ralli Clasen, and I used both text and quotes from that page and played with them. It seemed to turn into a poem about a restless, pensive designer/homeowner. I think my first tanka stanza works better then my second one, however.

Shore House
 
The home’s bold punches—
the knots and all the weird things
that swirl in her mind
come in big waves, inky blue—
one-minute walk to the beach.
 
More subtle whispers:
“Drywall to me is sterile.”
“Wood warms everything.”
Possibilities out loud:
“Likely that we’ll move again.”

PAD Day 10: A Country of Grief

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: Write a "mini" poem (10 lines or less) or a poem that focuses on something "mini" that's longer, and (2) "In his poem, 'Goodbye,' Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the 'container' for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.

The two prompts work together pretty well, except Brock's poem is 12 lines long, not 10. I did write a 12-line poem on the topic of grief, but I won't share that one here today. Instead, I rewrote a short three-stanza poem that I had written last month, reworking all the stanzas, especially the second one, to include questions as in Brock's poem. So it's  a little longer than specifiied in Robert's prompt, but it does have an element of "mini" (or "small") incorporated into it. I felt it needed to be shared even more than the first one I wrote.

Holes in Minab
 
We are not sure what the drone sees at first—
dozens of rectangular holes, some still undug,
their dimensions etched in the dirt,
near the rubble that used to be a school.
 
What are those little holes in the ground?
They are scars, the wailing of souls.
What will go in those holes in the ground?
The remains of more than a hundred children.
 
Three reckless rockets found their mark.
Three reckless rockets fired by our country.
The holes look so small from up here.
And we, too, are so very small.

 

PAD Day 9: Amaze, Amaze, Amaze

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem titled "_____ But _____," and (2) " try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts."  

I went off on a little tangent with the second prompt. Instead of writing in the voice of an animal or plant, I chose a certain intelligent alien in a certain new SF movie called Project Hail Mary, based on the novel by Anrew Weir (who also wrote The Martian.) I highly recommend it. It's exciting, funny, heartwarming with a positive message, with amazing non-digital, non-AI effects, and a perfect family-friendly "popcorn movie." The last sentence of the poem, spoken by "Rocky" in the film, is already becoming a catch-phrase, in fact one of the Artemis crew recently quioted it in reference to their views of the earth and the moon. So without further ado, here's Rocky (via the translator built by Dr. Grace):

Rock, But Living
 
Hello, I am [unintelligible musical language].
My human friend Grace calls me “Rocky.”
That is because I am made of rock, but living.
I am from planet you call Erid.
We meet in space, near star you call Tau Ceti. 

After I send Grace messages
made from metallic xenon, we dock our ships.
We are scientists and engineers.
We work together to try to solve problem 

of “astrophages” which are eating our suns. 

We become friends, even though we are very different.
I breathe ammonia, he breathes nitrogen and oxygen.
I have five appendages, he has only four,
and something called “face.”
I can only “see” by echolocation.
But we have same objective, to find way
to save our suns and our universe.
Good job, good job, Rocky and Grace.
Grace tells me not to say more,
or I will make something called “spoiler.”
Grace says, come watch moving picture
of our story. Amaze, amaze, amaze!

PAD Day 8: What a Fool Believes

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "paranoid"poem, and (2) " In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase."

It seems I can't help getting political these days, especially since we seem to have dodged Armageddon (at least for now) in the past 24 hours. But these days when I hear "paranoid,"  I immediately think of conspiracy theories, which seem to be predominately the product of right-wing fanatic groups like Q-Anon. Here, I list several of the more popular ones, plus a couple of my own creation. 

Q-razy
 
I’m not paranoid,
but a cabal of rich ravenous cannibals
are eating babies in a pizza parlor basement
in Washington DC.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but windmills and chemtrails cause cancer,
and additives in juice boxes
are turning our children gay.
 
I’m not paranoid
but JFK Jr. is alive,
lurking outside Area 51,
plotting to rescue all the captive aliens.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but George Soros pays radical leftists
to fly American flags outside their homes
to make us think they’re patriotic.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but Jewish space lasers cause wildfires,
and Democrats have secret technology
to steer hurricanes toward red states.
 
I’m not paranoid, 

but the first moon landing was faked 

on a Hollywood set, and the latest mission, 

Artemis, was all done with AI.
 
I’m not paranoid,
but I can feel you all judging me.
That’s all right. I’ll get the last laugh
when Trump and Jesus take me to heaven.

PAD Day 7: Double Dutch

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "dawn" or "dusk" poem, and (2) "In her poem, 'Front Yard Rhyme,' Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to."

Considering the downright scary threats our "president" has made against Iran over the last few days, I pray, ironically, that they are lies and that he has no intention of bombing an entire country out of existence. These are troubling times, so I apologize if this poem appears to make light of the situation. I take it dead seriously.

Jump Rope Chant
 
Liar, liar,
dawn to dusk,
frenemy to Elon Musk.
 
Liar, liar,
dusk to dawn,
rant all night, you do go on!
 
We just wish you’d go away,
how many lies did you tell today?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight….