On, In, and Around Mondays: Finding Our Place Within

The place I am this morning is tired.

Maybe it's the time-change. More likely it's that the day ahead is too small for what I need to fit into it. Laundry, home schooling, business, preparing a talk for tomorrow.

Yesterday I did nothing much, because I knew the place I was in. But my daughters and I played a little poetry game.

"Bring a notebook and a pen to dinner," I said.

"That sounds mysterious. And exciting!" chimed my Littlest.

We borrowed lines from Elizabeth Bishop, to use as our own first lines. Then we played with various catalog techniques... repeat words at the beginning of the lines, repeat words between lines, repeat words at the end of the lines.

I can't say I wrote anything really worth sharing. My Littlest also found the exercises difficult. She and I are the same kind of writers; we write from a place of personal rhythm. Even so, I imagine that my Littlest and I were skill-building, though our poems-of-the-moment suffered. But my Eldest was empowered by the experience. And all of us agreed it is a marvelous way to play with words.

Here are two poems from my Eldest, then...

A washing hangs upon the line
a washing rain engulfs it.

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With ten big beads,
one a pin for a dress of beads,
black and red beads,
one bead lost in a lawn where beads
of dew still stand, two beads
blue shiny earring beads
three beads forgotten in a box of buttons, only beads
to attest to ten big beads,
now three beads left, beads
yet unfathomed, unexplored, unused. Beads.

— by Sara

Japanese Maple photo by L.L. Barkat. Poems by Sara, used with permission.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also in honor of Random Acts of Poetry.