a ghazal for the youngest among us

Greetings, Poetry Friday Fans! I missed last week and look forward to making some rounds this long weekend.  It being the last Friday of the month, the Seven Poetry Sisters are sharing their challenge, which is simply to write a ghazal.  Ha.

I've tackled this challenge before with the Inklings critique group and it was challenging indeed, but I came up with something that I was proud of (and which therefore is redacted from the post so I can submit it elsewhere). But luckily for busy me, I found another attempt in my notes which also looks pretty good.  It even touches on the Sisters' theme of transformation.

So here, in cheater-pants fashion because I have a MANUSCRIPT to finish, is a ghazal I wrote during the last trying days of PreK before the COVID-19 shutdown. The group of kids I had were unlike any group of 4's I've known, and in a way, the break in the routine of distress behavior and the switch to online school was a good thing.  It certainly saved my psychological bacon!

And how are you doing with that, folks? I'm realizing that this might be at the heart of what we keep calling "self-care"--not to take care of ourselves in addition to everything else we are doing and which leads to the distress in the first place, but to ASK FOR WHAT WE NEED, giving others the responsibility and the opportunity to carry some of the load in a way that actually helps. (As a teacher, for me that's never treats in my mailbox but a note acknowledging something hard or helpful that I'm doing.)

Ghazal-wise, this poem doesn't exactly follow the rules.  Each stanza is not "structurally, thematically, and emotionally autonomous," and I did get a little carried away with the rhyme scheme...but I'm sticking with this beyond-the-bandaid poem.

Thanks to our host today, Patricia at Reverie--go guzzle all the ghazals!

extra sensory perception

Greetings, Poetry People! You know how your TBR stack (physical or virtual) gets so deep you've forgotten what's in it? I went casting around in Audible to see what I had available to read and found AN IMMENSE WORLD by Ed Yong, a book about how animals have sensory "umwelten" that humans have, essentially, only just begun to think of understanding.

This coincides with the arrival home of my college-aged son, who is now a bio/psych major instead of a psych/bio major and who knows just an avalanche of fascinating facts about animal and mycological life.  This is a kid whose phone contains, among the various culture memes and plenty of music, a graphic of the life cycle of slime molds, which he describe as like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. (MEANWHILE, by Jason Shiga, was a seminal text in our house.)

Meanwhile, I'm trying to write a poem a day this month using quotes and phrases overheard and overread as starting points.  Here's the first inspired by AN IMMENSE WORLD:

Thanks to our host today, dear Robyn over at Life on the Deckle Edge! Bonus Mother's Day photo: me, my mom, my daughter.

Rehoboth Beach, Nov. 2015

Bonus music connection for anyone still reading: "Senses Working Overtime" by XTC.

speedpost: inklings challenge

Giant UU Climate Convocation on Saturday; so many last-minute details like oh-yeah-we-probably-need--a-moderator-for-the-consensus-discussion-and-what-about-"Blue Boat Home?"***

So dear Linda made it easy for us with this:

Write a poem from your O-L-W for 2023
Or
Find a piece of artwork that has a word(s) embedded and write an ekphrastic poem inspired by the piece
Or
Go to Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day (any similar site) and be inspired by a word from there
Or
Just write a poem–about anything that needs to be written


Et voila here is a definito that is definitoly linked to my OLW hashtag CHANGE:

Merry May Friday to you all and don't forget to check out all the other Inklings and all the other goodness at the blog of our lovely host Linda, TeacherDance.


****Bonus "Blue Boat Home"