April 20, 2015 – Sunshine Lane

Parts of My Beautiful Days|NaPoWriMo Day 20

Ketchup on crackers,
hugs and loud laughter,
pickles and dew drops,
and icy Coke after.

Sunshine and kisses,
snowflakes and rain,
these are all parts
of my beautiful days.

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And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge to write a poem that states the things you know. For example, “The sky is blue” or “Pizza is my favorite food” or “The world’s smallest squid is Parateuthis tunicata. Each line can be a separate statement, or you can run them together. The things you “know” of course, might be facts, or they might be a little bit more like beliefs.

While I know all these things about myself, I can’t truly consider them “concrete” facts. They are more in the vein of things I believe and know about myself. This is actually a little poem I wrote in 2012 so I sort of cheated. 🙂

Peace and love, Elaine

Creative Blogger Award Catch Up

I have been so caught up in NaPoWriMo and writing a poem a day through this month, that I have been quite remiss in following up on a great honor a fellow blogger gave me on April 3rd.

Nicky at: https://sailingpenguin.wordpress.com

nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award! (Please go visit her site! She is really a great writer and besides dealing with CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), she also love penguins and sailing tall ships amongst other unique interestests and has been a great encouragement to me in my blogging.

Now, here are the rules for the Creative Blogger Award:

Nominate blogs you enjoy and notify all nominees via their social media/blogs

Pass these rules onto them

Thank and post the link that nominated you (very important)

Share 5 facts about you to your readers

I would like to nominate the following blogs for the Creative Blogging Award. I have enjoyed reading their blogs so much! I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

Wendy MacDonald https://greenlightlady.wordpress.com
Musings of PuppyDoc http://phoebemd.com
A Thing for Words https://athingforwordsjahesch.wordpress.com
little learner https://littlelearner.wordpress.com
The Fash Family https://thefashfamily.wordpress.com
The ancient eavesdropper https://tylerpedersen02.wordpress.com

Okay, now five facts about me. Things like this are always hard for me, but here goes:

I was born and raised in Lubbock, Texas which is a town at the southern most area of the Great Plains. Where I grew up, the land is as flat as a table. Seriously, I thought a “hill” was the slope from our driveway to the street for years. My father was a cotton farmer and I think a field full of mature cotton is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. So of course I live in Colorado, where there are no cotton fields! Hahaha! I love the mountains too, of course and wake up every morning with a perfect view of Pikes Peak outside my bedroom window.
I never thought of myself as creative until one day when it was pointed out to me that I’m an artistic, creative junkie of sorts. I write, crochet, knit, draw (poorly), cross-stitch, embroider, sew, and love colors so much that my favorite color is all the colors!
I’m about to celebrate my 20th anniversary with the love of my life and to celebrate we’re traveling to Ireland! I’m beyond excited as I’ve never been out of the USA and, being of Irish descent, I’ve always wanted to visit the “old country” to see if it is as wonderful as I’ve always imagined.
I’m a hugger. Yep, I’m one of those people whose emotions translate into physical contact, primarily through hugging people, patting them on the back, or, if truly moved deeply, by kissing them on the cheek.
I love children and old people and would do anything for either of these two age groups. I feel very protective and caring of these two age groups of people. They are both the most vulnerable and the most honest of the whole human race.

Ok, and last, but certainly not least, I love my family, friends, and dog, Buddy, with all my heart. I love God with all my soul and I’m thankful for Jesus who saved my soul.

Peace and love, Elaine

Woman’s Life Landay|NaPoWriMo Day 19

Why must a woman’s life be so hard?
Because she bears the future in her soul, body, heart.

And for today’s prompt (optional, as always!), I’d like to challenge you to write a landay. Landays are 22-syllable couplets, generally rhyming. The form comes from Afghanistan, where women often use it in verses that range from the sly and humorous to the deeply sardonic and melancholy. Check out this long investigative article on landays for a fascinating look into a form of poetry often composed in secret, and rarely written down. You could try to write a single landay – a hard-hitting couplet that shares some secret (or unspoken) truth, or you could try to write a poem that strings multiple landays together like stanzas (maybe something akin to a syllabic ghazal?)

I read the article linked in the prompt and learned that most landays are written with nine syllables in the first line and thirteen syllables in the second. These are usually not written down anywhere because women aren’t allowed to write poetry in Afghanistan, but are composed to be easily remembered and shared with others. These come from a long oral tradition dating back thousands of years. Some that they quote are quite heartbreaking. I hope I have captured the spirit of the landay because I really find it inspiring. Elaine

The Baby Is Coming!|NaPoWriMo Day 18

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

What do we do?
Where do we go?
Did you grab my bag?
My hair is a mess!

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

I have one brown sandal on
and one black one,
oh well, let’s go,
no one will look at your feet!

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

Why did I wait so long
to wake you up
so we could go?

Honey, it’s ok, really,
I didn’t mean to yell
at you! It just hurts!

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

The troops have
been rallied.
They’re in the waiting room.
Even Daddy came to
wait and see,
his little grandchild to be.

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

Oh, my body grows weak,
we’re trying so hard
to work as a team,
but twenty four hours
of laboring on,
seems sort of like a
bad dream.

The baby is coming!
The baby is coming!

The time has finally arrived!
Hallelujah!
It’s a boy!
What did you say
he weighed?
Nine pounds, five ounces.
Oh my! He’s huge!

The baby is here!
The baby is here!

Mother and babe are fine.
Now comes the hard part,
when we take him home,
for he has truly
stolen our hearts.

I pray that we raise him,
faithful and true,
gentle and strong,
don’t you?

The baby is here!
The baby is here!

As soon as I wake up well,
I promise I’ll give a loud cheer!

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And now for our (as always, optional) prompt, which takes us from 2015 back to the 1700s. After all, it’s the eighteenth of April, which means that today is the 240th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere! Today, in keeping with the theme of rush and warning, I challenge you to write a poem that involves an urgent journey and an important message. It could historical, mythical, entirely fictional, or memoir-ical.

Sunbeams|NaPoWriMo Day 17

Twenty years ago today,
the Oklahoma bombing
occurred and a tornado
was headed towards
my sons’ school
that same afternoon.

I was at work and
could do nothing
about either situation.

I was a basket case,
heartbroken,
terrified, and worn out.

My fiance’ picked
me up from work.

My boys were safe
and happy,
eyes shining.

At home,
on the kitchen table,
was a bright yellow
sunshine cake
that my boyfriend
had made to
cheer me up.

St. Francis said,
“A single sunbeam
is strong enough
to drive away
many shadows.”

That cake was a
single sunbeam
for me that day.

The hug my boyfriend
gave me then also
was so sweet that
I could feel the
sadness leave
my body.

The day was still
tragic, but when we
share bad days
with ones we love,
when the sun
comes up the next morning,
we’re better able to
get up with it.

I’ve been a little behind on poem writing the past couple of days, but I’ll be caught up by tomorrow evening I think. The prompt for day 17 was to write a “social media”-style poem. Namecheck all of your friends. Quote from their texts, tweets, FB status updates, twitter accounts, and blogposts, and the back of the cereal box on your breakfast table. The poem is about you and you are about what you say, think, talk, eat. You might end up with a poem that seems bizarrely solipsistic (like the internet itself, maybe?), but there might also be a spark there of something live and fun and present (like the verbal equivalent of a really great animated cat .gif).

I must admit I did look at FB posts from today and between some of those posts, my own memories, and the great quote from St. Francis, this poem was born. I didn’t follow the prompt quite, but, I like what this poem says. I hope you do too.