THE TURTLE WINS

Slow, slow,
Don't go.
Ease up
on the gas.
Don't go so fast.
Find a hammock.
Take a rest.
Sometimes,
going slow 
is best.

    In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, it is the slow and steady tortoise who wins the race.  Your poetry challenge for today is to write a poem about stopping to smell the roses.  Have fun writing.

FRIENDS

Joe is a girafee.
Tom is a turtle.

"Come on friend,
Let's go play,"
said Joe.

"Oh, NO!
We cannot
be friends," said Tom.

"Ridiculous.
Why can't we be friends?"
asked Joe.
"I want to know."

"Because you're so tall
and I'm so small
way down here below,"
said Tom.

"Ridiculous,"
repeated Joe.

"You like to eat acacia leaves
high up on acacia trees.
You're so big, you frighten me,"
said Tom pulling into his shell.

"RIDICULOUS!"

"You walk fast
and gallop as you go.
I toddle along.
Turtles go s-l-o-w."

"Ridiculous, I don't think so," said Joe.

"Oh yes," said Tom.
"With four long legs
you're fast when you flee,
and I worry.
You might kick me.
Oh NO!  Friends--
we can never be."

"Hmmmm," thought Joe.
"Let me see.  If I can find
one thing that is the same,
will you then
play a game?"

"I guess, maybe.
But what can that be?
I'm asking you, Joe
with your head
in that tree."

"Tom, that's it," said Joe.
"How we're the same,
I think I know.
I stick out my neck 
to get these acacia leaves.
I'll drop some down
for you to see.
Now you can eat along with me.

"But you, little turtle,
must stick out your neck too,
to eat the leaves
I've dropped for you."

"For being good friends
takes more than kisses and pecks
it requires
sticking out our necks."

     This is very new, and very rough, but I'm having fun working on a drawing to go with it which is fun for me too.  I'll continue to do some editing and polishing. There are a lot of reversed rhymes, and I'm going to have to work to get rid of these forced rhymes.   This started because I was having fun saying, ridiculous.  And I knew I wanted to use the word. 
    Can you write your own poem today based upon a single word like ridiculous, shucks, gosh, yes, no, or another word?  Have fun.

SLEEPY MONDAYS

Some Mondays
are a little hard for me.
I start my day too slow.

Mom stands at my doorway
and urges me to 
GO.   GO.   GO.

I want to turn over
and sleep some more.
But Mom, she will not wait.

She says if I don't
put a wiggle on
I surely will be late.



     All of us are late at sometime.  I remember when I transitioned from elementary school to Junior High and we got a lecture on being tardy and the consequences of three tardies in one grading period.  Do you remember the March Hare from Alice in Wonderland rushing around saying "I'm late.  I'm late."  The author Lewis Carroll was a math tutor at Christ Church College in Oxford, England.  At midnight the bells would start chiming in the bell tower. (This was before the time of wrist watches and cell phones with alarms.)  The students could hear the bells from anywhere in the town.  It meant they needed to get back to their rooms.  If a student wasn't back inside the gates of the college by the end of the 100th chime, the gates were locked and the student was locked out for the night. (And probably had to sleep on the streets.)   So your challenge for today is to write a poem about being late.  Have fun.  And if you are late in writing this poem, that is OK, I won't throw you out in the street.  Have fun.