Crooked driftwood in the skinny tree,
Debris like veils shrouding broken branches,
Small ground gourds from the previous summer
Tumbling to artful rest on piles of small trees,
Spring Creek after the seasonal storm. Continue reading “After the Storm”
Tag: creative writing
Open Pocket: Insert Poem
I will always love paper. Paper of any kind—in books, newspapers, letters, postcards, cardboard, playing cards, wadded up paper, paper made into origami figures and footballs and those little fortune-teller things you used to make in junior high during history class, notes, grocery lists, wrapping paper. Yeah, you get the idea.
April 18, Poem in Your Pocket Day, is about paper. And more specifically about poetry on paper. I know you can “cheat” and carry a poem on your phone or some other electronic device or in your head or some such. But I prefer old school Poem in Your Pocket Day. A poem on a piece of paper folded and inserted in your pocket. Not in your purse or your backpack or your car or in your lunch. In your actual pocket. Continue reading “Open Pocket: Insert Poem”
Cruelest Month Celebration: Treasure Hunting!
The Cruelest Month Celebration scheduled for April 20, Saturday, at the museum is coming very soon. I am working on the poem treasure/cache hunt that will be the new activity for the day. Thirteen poem-clues will guide you around the property to a treasure that awaits you. Continue reading “Cruelest Month Celebration: Treasure Hunting!”
Moving
The spoonbill were running at low water dam,
But the shirtless and shifty left little room
To cast a line. We took the advice
Of the bait shop clerk and a one-legged war veteran
On a scooter and headed across corps land
To a sand bass creek. Crossing a low area, Continue reading “Moving”
Exploding Seashells
“CIA assassination plots included poisoning a box of Castro’s favorite cigars with botulinus toxin and placing explosive seashells in his favorite diving spots.”
The box of oatmeal broke apart
In my hands, the Quaker man
Decapitated, his smile
An unreturned greeting
Forever.
One wonders how chance
And plan intersect. I found
A missing earring when I bent
To scoop up the oats.
What if he had not been drawn
To the purple drupa
And instead reached
For the virgin murex? Continue reading “Exploding Seashells”
The Poetry-Friendly Classroom: With 7 Hostile Verbs
I was a high school and college English teacher for 24 years and littered the classroom with poetry as much as I could without causing epic upheavals and riots . . . though we did get close. Because I’ve loved and written poetry since I was young, I carried that love into the classroom, with mixed results, of course. I learned over time that being a stealth poetry teacher was the best mode of attack: Don’t let them know they are reading or writing poetry. Continue reading “The Poetry-Friendly Classroom: With 7 Hostile Verbs”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 