Poetry Friday – Testudinate

Hello, poet friends, I am honored to be collecting your sweet submissions today; it is my first time hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup. What a joy!

I keep a “Writing Ideas” notebook for inspirations, many of them gathered weekly from your posts. This week I wrote an “In One Word” poem inspired by April Halprin Wayland at TeachingAuthors.com on this August 13, 2021 post. Follow this post for April’s full directions for the “In One Word” poem.

Monday’s Dictionary.com word of the day was testudinate, so I chose to use that one word because it brought to mind the noble Galapagos tortoise with its familiar carapace. More reasons: they are one of my favorite animals, I recently learned galápago is Spanish for tortoise, and I had never seen the word testudinate before.

I used Wordmaker and wrote a list of words that interested me, which was easy to do from the 497 that were found. My poem has about 35 words derived from the letters in testudinate. I love word puzzles and poetry, so when the two intertwine, I’m doubly happy. (I realize I used daunt as a noun in my poem, one of the problems in limiting your word choice!)

Image by Parker_West from Pixabay

Attitudes of Testudinate

When God teased
animals out of dust,
the dust was sent
with extra attitude
into galápago, situated
and sainted
to be one imposing idea
nested in the sun and sand
near the sea.

Half ton of ease,
100+ years to tease adieus
and dine
or not, for they can hold their need
for food and water, the seed
of their last meal can sate
them a year. Their size not stunted
nor tainted
with daunt.

A prehistoric statue?
No, he is life united
a staid sedan
among animals. A titan
suited for us curious students
to attest
that this creation attends
to and attunes
our priorities, unstated
hurries and worries end.
Slowly, slowly the din
dims and we see.

Draft by Denise Krebs

Image by Raúl Blázquez Viedma from Pixabay

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