#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Four

Bee photo by Gretchen Hosking

Pollinators

Ground nesting
Insects
Bees
Burrow in dirt

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today’s (optional) prompt is a fun one. Find a factual article about an animal. A Wikipedia article or something from National Geographic would do nicely – just make sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot. Now, go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.

Good Afternoon and welcome to day twenty four of #NaPoWriMo where I did not follow the prompt strictly. I did read an article on ground nesting bees. We have had them in our backyard as far back as I remember. They are attracted to the flowers Shawn grows out there and the fact we never laid down grass or gravel. There is plenty of south facing bare soil in our backyard. Well last weekend Shawn was putting in new brick to finish off the look of the new patio we had put in in February and the ground bees were not happy with him. He was disturbing their homes. Since then we have noticed one bee flying in and out of the topsoil bag left from Shawn’s gardening in the spring of 2020. Poor bee did not chose a wise relocation; he’s going to be disturbed again if Shawn uses the soil for more planting.

Backyard Seating Area

Photo of the brick work Shawn did on what is now Speedy’s side of the yard. We now have brick at the back of the new patio to match. And some of our lovely flowers the bees and hummingbirds love to frequent. And for those curious my poem today is a Teacup dictionary poem. Another short poetry I enjoy writing. Ostentatious

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#NaPoWriMo Concrete Poem

Card in my reading care package from Changing Hands Bookstore 

Serendipity

Stumbling upon
Happy chance
Kismet
Luck
Fortune smiles on you

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our prompt for the day (optional as always) is inspired by Kaschock’s use of space to organize her poems. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem. This might seem like a very modernist idea, but poets have been writing concrete poems since the 1600s! Your poem can take a simple shape, like a box or ball, or maybe you’ll have fun trying something more elaborate, like this poem in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Good morning readers and welcome to day nine of napowrimo where we get to write a shape poem. The first time I participated in NaPoWriMo I wrote a concrete poem in the shape of a teapot (the format does not work on mobile devices so I hope everyone is on a computer). Since then I have written a few more concrete poems including teacup dictionary poems.

As it happens the word serendipity has been on my mind. I used it in my April 4 post on dreams, thinking our dinner discussion the previous night was rather serendipitous. After that I was looking at my care package from Changing Hands Bookstore and saw the card explaining serendipity – it has suited my needs quite well.

Commander Riker – “Fate. Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise.” (Star Trek)

For anyone interested on a how to teacup dictionary poem. Happy writing! I hope fortune smiles on everyone today as well as the rest of April.

My Favorite Space

Librocubicularist

Person who loves to read
lying down in bed
nose in a book
escapism
cocooned in cozy blankets

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 25 – In 1958, the philosopher/critic Gaston Bachelard wrote a book called The Poetics of Space, about the emotional relationship that people have with particular kinds of spaces – the insides of sea shells, drawers, nooks, and all the various parts of houses. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that explores a small, defined space – it could be your childhood bedroom, or the box where you keep old photos. It could be the inside of a coin purse or the recesses of an umbrella stand. Any space will do – so long as it is small, definite, and meaningful to you.

Welcome back to day 25 of NaPoWriMo. What better way to describe my favorite place than a teacup dictionary poem defining the word for my favorite activity snug and warm in my favorite space. When I first learned the word librocubicularist, I wrote a septolet about it. Love how I can use one word to describe my favorite activity in my favorite space.

Teacup Dictionary Poem

My mom and me

Ostentatious 

Highfalutin
flowery
verbose
ham
Word mom could not spell

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day 3 – Today I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. And I’d like to ask you to center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned.

Welcome back to day three of NaPoWriMo. I wrote this teacup dictionary poem in honor of my mom. Growing up whenever we couldn’t spell a word and would ask, How do you spell… We were told to look it up in the dictionary. Then one day after I moved to Arizona, the phone rang. When I answered it my mom asked, how do you spell ostentatious? Ha-ha turn about, right? But I begin to spell, O S. That’s why I can’t find it; I was looking under au. Yes, the big problem when told to look a word up in the dictionary, one needs to know how to spell. And because my mom was always a huge tea drinker, I thought she would appreciate this poem form.

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 17

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Prestidigitation

Abracadabra
legerdemain
deception
magic
trick
dictionary teacup

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today, I challenge you to find, either on your shelves or online, a specialized dictionary. This could be, for example, a dictionary of nautical terms, or woodworking terms, or geology terms. Anything, really, so long as it’s not a standard dictionary! Now write a poem that incorporates at least ten words from your specialized source. Happy writing!

Yes, I went off script today. There are only 6 words used that can be found in a dictionary for magic. By the way, if anyone needs help pulling a rabbit from their hat, umm…poem. This website has a whole list of different dictionaries. At first I was trying to find an old age dictionary – no luck. My dad’s birthday is this Tuesday, and I thought I could poke fun at his age. Then I thought of the teacup dictionary poetry form, which for prestidigitation did not work completely as planned as the 5 syllable word and 4 syllable word appear to be of the same length. But here is the second poem I wrote today.

Seventy-five

Two digits
Number
Age
Real old-fogey

April Quickly Approaching

Let’s take a look back to 2014. NaPoWriMo Day Seven See the Riker action figure sitting on my desk? And the lovely orange wall behind him (yes, the wall looks yellow in the picture). Well last Friday after I posted my poem about our new water system, I went to sit at the desk to work on the computer some more. But I was stopped in my tracks when I noticed a pool of water under the desk. This is what the same spot looked like over this past weekend.

What happens after writing about a trickle. Water decides to pour. 😦

The connection from the main water pipe to the pipe in the attic leaked. Water was pouring down the side of my house and into the bedroom. I called Parker and Sons. They got a plumber out Friday afternoon who determined it was their problem; fixed the connection and called the restoration company. The fans and dehumidifier were running all weekend. My mother-in-law hosted Easter dinner at her house; we did get away from the noise for a little while. This morning the Dry Force guy came; took readings, and YES! everything is dried out so the fans are gone.

Industrial fans
hum nonstop – my sanity
called into question

Friday night, Shawn and I escaped the noise, too. We went to a poetry reading at 9 the Gallery in Phoenix – Ms. X’s Ocean (April 2016) the poetry of Elizabeth McNeil. The poetess challenged the audience to write a poem for murmuration – here it goes.

Murmuration

flock of birds
in sync
hum
hypnotic flight

This is a play on Teacup Dictionary Poem.