Category: 2021

Riddle Poems for Poetry Friday

Denise Krebs14 Comments

Thank you, Carol, for hosting Poetry Friday today with this lovely post at her site, The Apples in My Orchard.

I almost didn’t get anything written, but then I saw Margaret’s LaMiPoFri post. I hadn’t heard the term “Last Minute Poetry Friday” before–coined by Kat Apel in this sweet post. Now, here I am, Friday evening, needing just such a concept. I had nothing except a conversation with my husband this morning over tea/coffee. So, in honor of LaMiPoFri, I decided to write a poem about that conversation.

Yesterday in an email from Dictionary.com, the subject line read: What 3-Letter Word Has Over 600 Senses? It led to an interesting article for language lovers that identified “thirteen weird and wondrous facts about English.” My husband and I brainstormed some of the uses of the said word. I remembered the following poem I wrote in April where the title was important to the poem, but I saved it for the end of the poem to read afterwards. Try it…

Put it on the table
A staging of a fable

Donkey deity in the desert
Matching pants and shirt

Pieces in a collection
Go in that direction

Arrange the type for print
Vinegar will keep the tint

Pick it up and make it right
A string of LED lights

Hunting dog points
Relocate bones and joints

Concrete gets hard
Groups that score in cards

Earth’s star sleeps
That camera pose keep

Part of a tennis match
A whole cohesive batch

Start a campfire
A car’s new tires

Get ready and into the blocks
All the tools in your box

Your heart yearns for that
A suit with a matching hat

Pieces played in the band
Moving the clock’s hands

Direction of the wind
Rows of teeth above your chin

Choose a wedding date
Fix the value at a rate

We could go on for days and days
There are four-hundred, thirty ways

To use my little title word
Three letters–how absurd!

Double click or highlight the title after the colon: Set

Here is another riddle poem.  The title is at the end…

What Word Am I?

To the right and left,
Around and through,
To and from, in and out,
Up and down, forward and back,
How many ways to unpack
Just three little letters?

  • Depleted supply
  • Will surely pass by
  • Working mousetrap
  • Water at the tap
  • Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, tees
  • A prisoner flees
  • Crash into a pole
  • Health in the hole
  • Gallop and lope
  • A candidate’s hope
  • Duration of a show
  • Lies of a beau
  • Sequence of cards
  • A narrow dog yard
  • Blood veins flowing
  • Rich to poor going
  • Do a quick task
  • Tip over the flask
  • Cheap shirt’s dye weeps
  • The friends you keep
  • Manage a shop
  • Reboot the laptop
  • Drip from your nose
  • Ruined panty hose
  • Unraveling sock
  • Faster than a walk

They say there are 600 ways–
But I’m running out of plays.
What is my poem about?
Just a little word that shouts!
But 600 ways? I doubt!

Double click or highlight the title after the colon: Run

Here is the interesting article I read. I saved it for down here, so you could try my riddle before looking at the article: “Say What? 13 Weird, Wondrous Facts About English”

Another World

Denise Krebs7 Comments
Today’s Slice of Life at TwoWritingTeachers.org, 17 August 2021

Another World

Would you believe it, little one?
There is more in your future.
More to enjoy, to embrace, to learn.
A whole world awaits — vast and immeasurable.

For now, you are warm and cozy.
You feel this is all there is–
rocking, swaying with the rhythm
nestled in the glow of her heart.

But you will be disrupted soon.
You will come out kicking,
demanding attention,
attempting to make sense of the chaos.
It will take you a lifetime

To realize you can’t make sense
of the chaos.
You weren’t made for…
disappointments
hurts
brokenness
wars
lies
abandonment
abrupt withdrawal
poverty
earthquakes
pandemics
death
protesting for freedoms never promised,
distractions from the pain.

But would you believe it, little one?
There is more in your future.
More to enjoy, to embrace, to learn.
A whole other world awaits
Uncluttered thoughts, unfettered hearts,
As inconceivable as this one once was to you
A world being prepared for your full humanity —
vast and immeasurable.

Poetry Friday – Mary Oliver

Denise Krebs20 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday. Thank you to Christie Wyman for hosting us today at her Wondering and Wandering blog. Be sure to read the community poem she compiled called “Poetry Is…”

This week I’ve been reading Mary Oliver.

I’m finding that poets are among those I want to keep company with. You, Poetry Friday friends, “who say, ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment and bow your heads.” Thank you for helping me see the wonder.

I love that poem, “Mysteries, Yes” by Mary Oliver in her book Evidence (2009). This week, I read her collection, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.

I’m not two weeks late for the #theSealyChallenge to read a poetry book a day in August. I didn’t even try to do the challenge. However, Margaret Simon has been inspiring me this month, so I thought I would read at least a couple of poetry books in August. I have 3-4 that idly and open-heartedly wait for me on my Kindle. This week it was Mary Oliver. Her collection is filled with beautiful hope, faith, love and nature. What could be better?

I went through my notes and wrote out some of the highlighted lines in my favorite poems. (I didn’t get very far into my favorite lines because of the sheer volume of them). I chose about twenty, cut them apart, and then arranged them in order until I was pleased. The results are a cento poem exclusively made with Mary Oliver’s words.

A Cento of Gratitude for Mary Oliver

Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then love the world.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving

Is this the place?
What would do for you?
And have you changed your life?

You have a life–just imagine that.
That the gift has been given–
Yes, yes, we are the lucky ones

to dance for the world,
all that glorious, temporary stuff
of this gritty earth gift.

You don’t hear such voices in an hour a day
Sometimes I want to sum up and give thanks,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

Sources for each line (in order)

      1. Don’t Hesitate
      2. To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
      3. To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
      4. I Wake Close to Morning
      5. Evidence
      6. Swan
      7. To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
      8. The Gift (from Felicity, 2014)
      9. I Know Someone
      10. Prayer
      11. On Meditating, Sort Of
      12. To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
      13. At the River Clarion
      14. That Little Beast
      15. The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came

Oliver, Mary. Devotions. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Slice of Life – Disengaging with Fiction

Denise Krebs12 Comments
Today’s Slice of Life at TwoWritingTeachers.org, 10 August 2021

The year was 1992 and my husband was traveling for his job. My children were two and four, and we had been at some friends’ house all day playing with their kids and passing the time. As we were leaving Kevin gave me a book, The Sphere, by Michael Crichton. I have no idea if the book was any good, or if I just needed an adult book and anything would have worked. Perhaps I had mentioned earlier in the day that it had been a long time since I had read a novel, and that is why he gave it to me. Anyway, I brought it home, put the girls to bed, and started reading it. I’m not a super fast reader, but for some reason my brain devoured this science fiction book and I read it until 3:00 a.m., and when I finally turned the last page I went to bed.

Those devouring reading times have come once in a while throughout my life when I have fasted too long from reading. For the past few years of teaching grade 5, my students and I have kept track of our reading. Each year I read 40-60 books. However, the pandemic came and reading became something I neglected. I don’t know why.

However, this month reading is coming back to me, fortunately. I read Clint Smith‘s How the Word is Passed, Winn Collier‘s Holy Curiosity, and yesterday I read most of The Racketeer by John Grisham. It was awful, but mesmerizing. I just had to finish it, kind of like The Sphere all those years ago. It reminded me that I need to find good fiction and start reading again! I need fiction to disengage and relieve stress, stress internalized from the daily news as well as the nonfiction books I’m reading.

Do you have any suggestions for my next adult or young adult fiction book?

Life

Denise Krebs13 Comments

Thank you, Mary Lee, for hosting today’s Poetry Friday Round Up. She wrote a powerful villanelle about her retirement. You can visit her at her new blog, A(nother) Year of Reading.

Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

The Poem-a-Day on 31 July 2021 was “Life” by Carrie Law Morgan Figgs.

        1
A moment of pleasure,
    An hour of pain,
A day of sunshine,
    A week of rain,
A fortnight of peace,
  A month of strife,
These taken together
  Make up life. 

              2
One real friend
    To a dozen foes,
Two open gates,
  ’Gainst twenty that’s closed,
Prosperity’s chair,
    Then adversity’s knife;
These my friends
    Make up life.

              3
At daybreak a blossom,
    At noontime a rose,
At twilight ’tis withered,
    At evening ’tis closed.
The din of confusion,
    The strain of the fife,
These with other things
    Make up life.

              4
A smile, then a tear,
    Like a mystic pearl,
A pause, then a rush
    Into the mad whirl,
A kiss, then a stab
  From a traitor’s knife;
I think that you’ll agree with me, 
    That this life.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 31, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

I wrote a summary poem about Figgs’ “Life” poem. I’m not sure why! I wrote two lines about each of her four stanzas.

About Life
After Carrie Law Morgan Figgs

Moments to months
The joy and the pain
Friends and prosperity
Adversity’s disdain

From daybreak to night
Whole lifetimes pass by
Life’s mystic, varied flurry
Days of storm and blue sky

Spiritual Journey Thursday – Respect

Denise Krebs10 Comments

Thank you, Linda, for hosting this Spiritual Journey Thursday today. I saw the word respect on the prompt calendar, and it was on my mind when I saw this recent post by Carlos Whittaker, introducing himself to his new followers:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Carlos Whittaker (@loswhit)

He explains about his Instagram account, that it is a place of hope, yet it’s not a “feel good” account. He gave this advice for his followers when they interact with each other over a hard topic:

“just show up here with this phrase inked on your soul…
Don’t stand on issues…
Walk with people…”

I have been thinking of these words all week because I see some friends and family traveling down paths of conspiracy theories. How can I walk with them respectfully? How can you believe such foolishness? I want to shout. Sometimes the seemingly-crazy ideas are all tied up in religion and God-belief too, so that is troubling and confusing.

I wrote a poem called a double golden shovel, inspired first by Linda and a “clunker line” poem she wrote with one of my lines and this recent post by Kim Johnson. I wrote the following poem as advice to myself. I find it natural to do one of two things when people have ideas I don’t respect:

  1. I become impatient with and disrespectful of the person.
  2. I just walk away and ignore them and their bad ideas.

But as Carlos suggests, there is another way — “with this phrase inked on your soul…Don’t stand on issues…Walk with people…”

Respect Advise to Me

Don’t expect that respect comes easily. With–
stand the temptation to blame this
on others who “get tired, keep on tryin'” (to borrow a phrase).
Issues of  r-e-s-p-e-c-t  aren’t solved by getting beliefs inked.
Walk in the footsteps of others. Be fully on
with empathy. Think of all people, not only your
people. Open wide the part that may reach others–your home soul.

Then after I read the two quotes together at the beginning and end of these lines, they seemed backwards. I would have preferred to have them the other way around, so I tried again. It was an interesting exercise, with very different possibilities for where the poem could go. There are also some difficult pairs when doing a double golden shovel, with word couplings like “Don’t this.” However, it was time well-spent getting me thinking about how to respect those I desperately disagree with.

Respect Advise to Me, Take 2

With new urgency I listen. Don’t
this-and-that and what-about to justify your stand.
Phrase of respect emblazoned on
inked chest doesn’t fix hatred issues.
On empathetic legs of grace I will walk
your road of pain and humanity. In peace, with
soul-searing hope, I will touch the hearts of people.

Early Birthday Celebrations

Denise Krebs4 Comments
Today’s Slice of Life at TwoWritingTeachers.org, 3 August 2021

Even though it’s a few days before my birthday, I’ve begun to celebrate. Today my friend took me to my favorite coffee shop for my favorite drink–Kaldi chai. It’s their special recipe of milk tea with spices and lots of ginger. So yummy. She said it was a Friendship Day / Birthday tea party.

Our favorite restaurant is Lumee Street Café. This evening Keith and I went for an early birthday dinner.

Here’s the description of what we ordered (from the downloaded menu still on my phone). The pictures were taken after we had dug in and removed a lot of the yummy stuff.

On the lower left:

Couscous Salad with Grilled Chicken Breast – Spiced couscous, peas, long beans, snow peas, raisins, roast peppers, sun-dried tomato, pomegranate, caramelized onion, grilled chicken breast slices

On the lower right:

Cauliflower Koshari – Steamed cauliflower rice, fire-roasted cauliflower, green lentils, chickpeas, gluten-free spaghetti, onion hamsa, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, spicy daqoos sauce (V, GF)

Then dessert of Pralines and Cream from Baskin-Robbins.

In between I read chapters in the novel Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. Now I’m relaxing and writing this post on my phone before I turn in early to read more in my book.

 

On Losing and 1/6

Denise Krebs27 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday. Our host is Becky Herzog. She blogs at Sloth Reads. Thank you for hosting, Becky. Becky was the first to mention that today was going to be International Friendship Day, so I wrote the poem above. I also wrote a friendship villanelle and gave it to my dear friend for her birthday. She framed it and sent the picture below to me.

I wrote a different villanelle this week for the #PoetryPals challenge that Tanita described last month:

We’re writing villanelles on the topic of dichotomy – or, true opposites, if you will. Bifurcations. Incongruities. Paradoxes. Contradictions. We’re talking Luke/Darth (or is that a false dichotomy, and they’re two sides of the same coin??? Discuss), real or imagined, civilized v. savage, winter v. summer, function v. dysfunction. Interested? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering (or someone else’s) with the rest of us on July 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

But first have you taken the chance lately to read this classic villanelle about the art of losing, “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Continued here…

Here is my poem, about something I’ve been following breathlessly this week. I know that, though it is in its third century of experimentation, a republic is not a hard thing to lose. I’m praying we don’t lose it on our watch.

1/6

Commission underway–All facts, the prize
If left to some, our land may never know
Will Truth and Justice win? Or bloodied lies?

Afraid to learn who knew and helped devise
Perverse the plan to halt and overthrow
Commission underway–All facts, the prize

Bipartisan committee will reprise
This doubtful nation’s faith. Will Congress grow?
Will Truth and Justice win? Or bloodied lies?

Already testimony will advise
The Light of truth bears us out of shadows
Commission underway–All facts, the prize

Do leaders fear being duly scrutinized?
Our hope’s in newness — not the status quo
Will Truth and Justice win? Or bloodied lies?

Choosing to fight lies should not polarize
Awake to honor, revived faith bestowed
Commission underway–All facts, the prize
Will Truth and Justice win? Or bloodied lies?

~Draft by Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs)