I woke up on Saturday to an email in my box with the ten words I needed to use in a poem for the 2 Day Poem Contest. (If you think you might want to participate, you can subscribe to get their email updates for next year’s contest.) I like to try this challenge because it’s like a puzzle. A two-day version of Wordle or Connections, perhaps.
I took this screenshot and sent it to our family group. My son-in-law and I looked up the words, and he started making jokes about how to use them. Then we continued on our day: out for coffee in glossy mugs, hiking, out to a deli for Reubens or matzo ball soup, on to a consignment shop fossicking for treasures, then home and out to ie Italian Eatery for the best meal in a long time! I think Minneapolis has some of the best food opportunities I’ve ever had the joy of eating.
Anyway, my poem got sent in without much thought except for the joyful time I’ve been having this long weekend with these dears: my daughter, her hubby, and mine. Today we fly home.
Someday, I hope to write a 2 Day Poem with something more than solving another word puzzle.
A Saturday in St. Paul (Ars Poetica)
Poetry, I’ve always said,
is full of the awestruck
Quietness of emotions
In a verklempt rag doll,
Moldable and mending.
Poetry is best served in
glossy, big-handled mugs,
along with a Reuben sandwich
and a pickle spear on the side.
Finding a good poem is
like fossicking at the
vintage store, most items
ignored for others to mine,
but some long for me,
treasures of life to embrace.
Poetry is a bowl of
matzo ball chicken soup
when one is feeling sick,
and reconciliation for the
one who remains sickly.
Poetry is a nature preserve
wrapped up in the big arms
of a lodestar of grace.
When all I feel I can do is
parrot other poets, it is their poetry
that intervenes and freshens
the brackish tears of my heart.
Poetry is the royal flush
of life and literature, a hand of
beauty and hope among
the high and low cards of my history.
