HAIKU

off and on, all day

rain falls, misting old mountains

ducks waddle to greet me

   Yesterday I got to play with my water colors again.  I had so much fun.  I wrote this haiku and when I first wrote it, I used "the mountains" in the middle line.  But since haiku is about packing a lot of information in, I look at my thes and a s to see if I can change it to a word which will tell more.  When I did that, I changed the mountains to old mountains.  Today, as I was typing the poem for this blog post, I saw I had used past tense and quickly changed my verb to present tense to make the poem more immediate.  Haiku should be in present tense.  So, I changed my fell to falls.  That is much better. I really do enjoy playing with the words and tinkering with the order of them.  For your poetry challenge for today, can you take out one of your old poems and give it another look?  Is there anything you want to change?  I feel like my poetry skills are always growing and if I look again at a poem a wrote more than a year ago, I can find things I can make better.  It is so much fun for me.  I hope you have fun looking at your poem with your eyes of today.  Enjoy poem making.

To bless or to make prosperous in Hawaiian is e hoomaikai.  But to be strong is hoomaika.  Only one letter is different between the two words.  I hope your poetry is strong today and that the words come making you prosperous and blessed.

Creativity is a spiritual practice.  It is not something that can be perfected, finished, and set aside. Julia Cameron

OF THIS DAY

Walk

into the morning

skies gray,

clouds cover,

rain--

a bluesy day.

Put feet

on the floor,

brush teeth,

plaster a smile.

Walk into this morning

make something beautiful.

   This is another poem that reads well, line by line, in either direction.  This is always a good sign for me that I've got only the essential words I need to convey the meaning of the poem.  I pulled a lot of words out of my draft.  I had considered using the title for the last line of the poem, but in revision I decided I didn't need that line.  I also had a simile--rain falls like tears-- but I thought that was a cliche, I'd heard that before.  So I got rid of the simile, and it left me with the question of What can rain do but fall? So it becomes redundant to say rain falls. I got rid of falls, too.  Now it is your turn.  Can you write a poem about the weather in your part of the country?  Then, after you have a draft, can you go back and get rid of every extra, redundant, cliche word you can find?  My critique group used to tease that they bring their poems and go home with haiku after we took out everything extra, all the words that didn't contribute to the meaning of the poem.  And, if you think that is bad, try critiquing haiku.  It is a fun challenge because absolutely every word has to count--exactly what writers of picture books are told when they write 100 word stories.

  The Poetry Friday Round Up is hosted by Buffy Silverman  this week.  You can find other poems by children's poets at her blog, Buffy's Blog 
  Thank you Buffy for hosting us this week.
   Just curious, are you like me?  Every time Friday rolls around, I feel like my poem for the day isn't good enough.  I look at poems I've posted earlier in the week and think I should have waited and posted that poem for Friday.

   Children's Poetry can make sunny days.