HAIKU

I awake to rain
misting old mountains
sunrise shines for rainbows

 This morning's  rainbow comes to ground at the end of my driveway.  It reminds me a pot of metaphorical gold is on my property.  How could one NOT want to get up with the sunrise when this is the view you get? 
Can you see the double rainbow?  Notice how the colors mirror one another?  Today is a day for writing springtime haiku.  Can you write your own haiku?  Remember to keep it in present tense--something I obviously have difficulty doing.  Today we've had rain off and on all day again too.  One of the Kauai hens is sheltering from the rain under one of my palm trees. She needs a raincoat.

Rain in Hawaiian is he ua, rainbow is he anuenue.

I am either going to be a good writer or a poor fool. Theodore Roethke.

The Floor

Suppose the floor had just been born
on a cold and dusky morn.
He finds the dirt you try to hide
perhaps it hurts the young floor's pride.
With many things to learn and do,
would the new floor walk over you?
If then you open up his doors
you'll find out what the floor abhors.

   This is just a bit of silliness.  What do you think the floor would tell you if you had a conversation?  What would your bed say?  The trash can?  The refrigerator?  Take an object and write a poem about it today.
   I know when I was in second grade and I tried to cut my own bangs on the day before school pictures, the silver scissors I held in my left hand were screaming, "Stop, stop!"  That's why my bangs ended up uneven.
   I used a mentor poem to write my poem, written by my birthday poet Theodore Roethke. His is titled The Ceiling.

Children's poems can start you wondering. 

NOTHING LEFT TO FOLLOW

When respect marches boldly
over desert sands,
his brown, work-worn hands,
smooth and dry
are held out in greeting.

Respect offers sparkle
in the tiny drops of dew
gathered on the petals 
of yellow creosote blooms.

Respect bleaches the bones
of a desert packrat--
his time too brief.

Not meaning to be rude,
I clasp the out-stretched hand;
I take the creosote branch;
and watch the bleaching
of my bones, as blown sands
shift erasing even my own footprints.
There is nothing left to follow.


     I hesitate to call today's offering a poem.  I believe is would be what Theodore Roethke referred to as a thinkie--the beginnings of a poem but something that needs more thinking.  So that is what I will do with this, save it for some more work.  I'm not sure respect is the word I need.  Would you like to offer a suggestion?
     For now I will say, when the poetry muse gives you weirdness, run with it.  Who knows where it might lead?
     What does respect mean to you?  Can you write a poem that shows respect?  Have fun writing and have a happy weekend.

PERSPIRATION

I'm hot
and 
I'm sweaty.
My body 
is aglow.
I'm 
the 
stinkiest
kid
I know.

       Sorry for this smelly poem today, but I just couldn't help myself.  Oh, it is so much fun to feel just a little bit naughty.  Your challenge for today is to write about a smell.
Theodore Roethke, wrote about a "congress of stinks," in his poem about the Root Cellar. Sylvia Plath wrote, "our noses/ Take hold of the loam" in describing Mushrooms in her poem.  So how would you describe a smell?  Have fun writing and playing with words.