Monday Morning

Night
falls
black
becomes gray
purple
red
orange
pink
blue
birds
soar
from saguaro
sing
good
morning.

     Good morning.  Happy Monday.  May this be a great week for you.  I was up to see a spectacular sunrise.  I wrote this spine poem, long and tall like the saguaro cacti with arms reaching upward in praise.  (Yes, there is a pun in writing a spine poem with cacti in it.) Each short line causes the reader to slow down and pause before going on to the next line.  Once I read a spine poem, I always like to try reading the poem from the bottom up to see if it still makes sense.  This one works fairly well.
     Did you notice the alliteration?  (black, becomes and soar, saguaro, sing) Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound. I like to think of alliteration as the opposite of rhyming.  Rhyming is when the ends of the words sound the same, alliteration is when the beginnings sound the same.