Wow. What a difference a month makes, huh?

On the final Friday of February I ran on a busy trail, met friends at a coffeehouse, attended a political event.

Today — the final Friday of March — I’ll be at home in my very little bungalow, trying to work in that way we all try to work now, getting out to walk or pull weeds when I can, listening to my spouse and grown kids on their various conference calls and Netflix parties.

I know we’re hearing a lot about how people aren’t doing things right in response to this utterly devastating global health crisis, but what amazes me is how well people are doing. How schools closed and kids came home, how shops shuttered, how we stopped seeing grandparents first and then co-workers and then friends. How we are finding our humanity, our tenderness, our senses of humor. How, oddly, we’re deepening connections.

Poetry has been all about that forever, of course. We’re just clunky people and it takes us awhile to catch up. So. Here we are. I started last week posting online poetry prompts for teachers, librarians, parents and kids suddenly in the midst of a distance learning experiment they didn’t expect. My first lesson was on writing gratitude etherees. Then, just last night, I posted another one on cinquains.

Now it’s Poetry Friday, and my Poetry Sisters and I have a prompt to attend to. It’s a loose one — “classic” — no particular topic or form. So I built on the work I’d been doing for my video and I wrote some cinquains. (OK, they’re not technically classic and certainly not ancient — they were first seen around 1915 — but I used the word “classic” in that conversational way we do, so I think it counts? Anyway…)

In my video prompt I suggested folks use the form to explore things they’re a little afraid of, things that worry them or that they don’t like. I know this sounds glass-half-empty, but we’d done gratitude the week before and, hey, a person’s got feelings, right?

So as much as I’d like to say I used this exercise as an escape, here are my Novel Coronavirus Cinquains for your reading pleasure.

Classic
Quarantino =
Sourdough starter and
Clorox in toilet paper tubes
on Zoom

Classic
Optimism =
We can do this, come back
Like wisteria vines in spring
Bloom. Heal.

For more classics, visit my pals here:
Laura
Sara
Tanita
Tricia
Kelly
Andi
Rebecca

And you can find all the Poetry Friday posts at The Opposite of Indifference!
Enjoy, and please friends, be safe and well.

So, one of our assignments this year (2020) is to look back with hindsight. Get it?
We decided it would be fun to reflect upon old work, have a conversation with it, even.

So this month I chose the tanka we wrote in February 2018, which were actually inspired by sonnets our friends had written the month before. (One of those gifts that keeps on giving!)

Anyway, the tanka I wrote were about the lungs.
Based on Tricia Stohr Hunt’s sonnet about breathing.

Rather than edit or change them (I actually still quite like them!), I thought I’d add to my collection of organ tanka. So that’s what I’ve got here — three tanka inspired by the heart, the liver, and the kidneys. Enjoy!

The Heart
Oh, Bedazzled Heart,
drama queen of the body!
Beneath her make-up,
she’s just grit and elbow grease –
punching that time clock, thump thump.

The Liver
Lily-livered lobes
hiding behind the rib cage –
still vulnerable,
still within reach of ruin,
poor poisoned apples.

The Kidneys
Curled in on yourselves,
busy little kidney beans
working like cheesecloth
keep clean the blood, keep busy
the body for tomorrow.

Here are the others’ reflections:
Tanita
Sara
Tricia
Laura
Kelly
Andi
Rebecca

And you’ll find poetry galore at Karen Edmisten’s Poetry Friday today.

I’ve been writing with my poetry sisters (Tricia, Kelly, Tanita, Laura, Andi, and Sara for a long, long time now (and we’ve recently welcomed Sara’s daughter, Rebecca). During this past year, though, the wheels came off a couple of times. I missed posting at least twice, and we tossed the towel in on a bigger project that was not feeling productive or poetic or, well, fun.

Still, the new year rolls around and I yearn for poetry plans. I yearn for the inspiration and the accountability. And, mostly, for the camaraderie. It turns out we all do!

So, here we go again with a few new twists (as always). For one, we’ll be posting on the last Friday of each month instead of the first (and that may or may not be because we simply didn’t have our acts together earlier this month). Also, we’ve got a couple of themes we’ll revisit several times this year. Two of those are vision puns (thank you, 2020) — foresight and hindsight. What a time — at the end of one decade and the beginning of another to look forward and back, right?

And that’s where we’re starting today — with foresight in the shape of a haiku. Apologies that mine emerged a little wet and dark — I guess I felt resistant to leaving this present moment! Anyway, here goes — and happy new year, friends. May the poetic moments abound…

Haiku
January, 2020

Today’s storm ignores
the foresight of umbrellas;
drops fall as they may

Now, enjoy my sister’s poems, too!

Laura
Sara
Tricia
Tanita
Andi
Kelly
Rebecca

And Jone Rush MacColloch is hosting Poetry Friday at Deo Writer.
Carry on, folks!

So, I’ve written villanelles before. Am I growing dumb or just rusty? I don’t know, but I worked on this right up until the last minute and it’s still not “done” (whatever that is).

Anyway, our assignment: A villanelle (which, if you aren’t familiar, is a 19-line poem consisting of 5 tercets and a quatrain with two repeating lines and a set rhyme scheme so that the whole thing starts to feel, well, at best, dreamy.) I don’t think I achieved that this time around but it’s an exercise, right?

OH — and our theme was winter — we had to use a few agreed-upon words and the ones I fit in were “rime” and “gust.” Here goes:

No Sense
By Liz Garton Scanlon

No sense waiting for the snow to fall
(and if it does it sure won’t stick).
We’re too temperate for squalls

dropping everything when nature calls,
shutters open, heartbeats quick.
Never waiting for the snow to fall –
we’re too temperate for squalls.

My friends have their villanelles here:

Laura
Tricia
Sara
Tanita

and Poetry Friday is at The Opposite of Indifference, here. Enjoy!

We’ve been assigned a pastoral this month — a poem both aware of the wild world but also naive to the complexities of our relationship with it.

I LOVE this prompt. I want to write a whole book full of pastorals. But I’m just back from a vacation (a dreamy one, to France) and am already off at a book festival, busy polishing up my slides for tomorrow’s school visit. So, I almost bailed.

But then Sara suggested I just post a pretty picture from France and I thought ok, c’mon, I can write a poem to go with one of those pictures. So I did.

Sunflowers

Tempted by the golden morning,
we step off the train into a language
we don’t speak and a hope
we don’t honestly possess
and I imagine this is what Van Gogh felt,
facing a field of sunflowers, bright
and wild until they went to seed.
But still, the stems are milky,
the paint dries yellow,
and we understand
enough to get by.

To read more, go here:

Laura
Tricia
Sara
Tanita
Rebecca
Andi

And Poetry Friday this week is at Library Matters. Enjoy!

Our prompt?
To write a poem comparing a snake to something it isn’t usually compared to.
In 8 lines.
Which means I basically broke all the rules.
But here goes….

Small World
By Liz Garton Scanlon


The snake as metaphor spells out the length
(the tight twistiness ) of a garden hose

to a world nearly impossibly small.

Want to read more??

Tricia
Sara
Tanita
Laura
Rebecca
Andi

And here’s Poetry Friday! Hurrah!

Summer time often means travel time, so it made sense to use trip pics as our poetry source this month.

More specifically, Sara offered up three images from a trip she made to Israel, all of which feature rock or stone structures. Beyond that, there were no specifications so you’ll find that our work really varies this month.

Here’s mine from the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem…

The Wailing
By Liz Garton Scanlon

We stand shoulder
to shoulder, the tiny
and the tall, the mighty
and the meek, the feared
and the beloved, we stand
like blades of grass, like warp
yarns, each absolutely singular
yet woven together and wailing,
wailing into the cracks of our lives

Now, here are the others…
Laura
Tanita
Sara
Kelly
Andi
Tricia

Plus, you’ll find poems of all stripes over at My Juicy Little Universe! Enjoy!

Up this month — triolets! Little French poems of eight lines — one of them repeating thrice so the reader feels awash in it — plus a rhyme scheme and an awareness of syllabics.

We’re also going with the theme HEAT because, well, summer.
Here goes:

She slipped through folds in time and space
(it is tomorrow there already!)
and dropped her maps, her plans misplaced –
who needs them in this state of grace
where who-you-were’s left not a trace?
Like summer sun, white-hot and steady,
she slipped through folds in time and space
and it’s tomorrow there already!

And here are my pal’s poems. You’ll love them!
Sara’s triolet
Tricia’s triolet
Laura’s triolet
Tanita’s triolet
Andi’s triolet
Kelly’s triolet
Rebecca’s triolet

And Tricia is the host of Poetry Friday, too, so you’ll find an embarrassment of riches over at her place.

Sara gave us this month’s challenge, which was to write a French Dizain, a poem with a funky rhyme scheme, ten lines, and ten syllables per line — a square!
This made me think of my birthday — April 4th — 4/4.
I’ve always loved the date but almost aspirationally since it’s rather too orderly for me.
Thus, my dizain.
Enjoy…

Myself as Square: A Dizain Self-Portrait

To be born day four of month four, steady
like a kitchen table, solid and square
like the root, multiplying already
into parsed out parts, chromosomal pairs,
orderly goodness and everyday prayers.
But then I turned to fire – giant, hot –
I burned down all the systems I’d been taught.
No longer easily divisible
nor doused, what random figure had I wrought?
Mad entropy — it’s me made visible!

Please enjoy the other dizains here:
Tricia
Tanita
Sara
Rebecca
Andi, Laura and Kelly are taking a month off but will be back in June!

And our beloved Jama is hosting Poetry Friday at Alphabet Soup, so go see her for poems galore!

Fences separate
but I only see the space,
the glimpses of light

#lizsharespoems #30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth