Poetry Friday October 18, 2019

Poetry Friday is hosted today Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Jama is an "author, blogger, foodie, alphabet lover, picture book nerd, soup maker, bear collector, diehard anglophile and secret wife of Colin Firth." (That's taken from her blog.) I am lucky to be Jama's facebook friend. Each day my feed is filled with gorgeous illustrations from modern and classic picture books. Today Jama is sharing snippets of poetry from Charles Ghigna’s new book,  Dear Poet: Notes to a Young Writer. Go on over and take note of the stunning illustrations created by his son. Don't forget to check out the links to other participants sharing poetry today.

I had a post ready to go last Friday with Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core, except for needing a final check and to add details about her post. I woke and went looking for my laptop to do just that. It wasn't where I usually leave it. I searched all over our living room for it. It wasn't under any of our furniture. It wasn't snugly tucked into our book shelves. I even checked the grandchildren's toy shelves. No laptop. I ransacked the rest of the house. No laptop. Being more than halfway convinced that it had been stolen, I phoned Apple and they helped me lock it so all my stuff was safe.

As we were planning on leaving town, I gave up and started to pack. My favourite sweatshirt wasn't in the closet so I went to the hamper of folded laundry that I still hadn't put away. There in the middle of the basket under folded clothes was my laptop. By then I had run out of time, so I'm sharing last week's post today. A friend of mine suggested my computer had gone searching for missing socks. Another that maybe the hard drive wanted cleaning. Catherine focused on gratitude last week. I'm very grateful to have found my laptop.

A couple of weeks ago Catherine and her Swagger friends showed off their zenos. She explained, "invented by J. Patrick Lewis, a zeno is a ten line form with a 8-4-2-1-4-2-1-4-2-1 syllable sequence an abcdefdghd rhyme scheme." Having a penchant for patterns in mathematics, I couldn't resist having a go. I played around with this format off and on. It is much harder than I expected! At first I ended up having too many 4-2-1 sequences. I gave up and figured I'd use them all because I couldn't decide which one to abandon. The good thing about missing posting last Friday is that when I looked at it this week, the words just came together to make the whole poem work.



M's Quilt

here stitched with love is Marguerite's quilt
patterns dance in
white and
red
spinning centre
braided
edge
gracing now an 
empty
bed

I made this quilt for my mother in law who died a number of years ago. My partner and I inherited the house and contents so the quilt has come back to me.


18 comments:

  1. Great job with the zeno, and what a beautiful quilt!

    And I'm so glad you found your laptop -- I would have totally panicked. I see that it probably wanted to spend some time with its softwear friends. :D

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    1. Ha! I think I might be able to create a found poem from all the lost laptop puns!

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  2. Cheriee, sometimes a blessing comes after the persistent search. I am constantly losing my phone that slips in between things. What was a disaster for you at the time, turned out to be a find. I love when we look back at a poem and see the right pattern. Your poem flows beautifully so congratulations on your zeno.

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    1. Thanks Carol. Find my iphone is one of the most used apps on my other devices!

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  3. Gorgeous quilt...the love from it is stitched into your zeno.
    "Softwear friends" -- Jama, you are too much!

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  4. Yikes, I would have panicked too at a lost laptop. Thanks goodness it all came out in the wash. Lovely zeno!

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    1. Oh wow, I am loving these found laptop puns! Thanks so much Buffy!

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  5. Oh, what a terrible panic! And, what a funny outcome. I'm glad you found your laptop. How do you go about getting it unlocked? And yes, a xeno is quite challenging at first. Those one syllable lines kills me! But, they do get more fun as you write more and more. Nice to see you stretching.

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    1. I used the find iPhone app and then pressed the lock button and did what it told me to do. When you lock it, you use a new, numbered, passcode that you create. Then you use the same passcode when you unlock it.

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  6. Oh, wow. Is that poem ever poignant. You say so much with just a few words -- "an empty bed."

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  7. Wonderful zeno, and that "empty bed" really got me. Beautiful quilt too!

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    1. It's amazing how hard it is to come up with those few words that say what you mean isn't it?

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  8. Glad you found your laptop--now there may be another poem or story in how it found it's way to the hamper. And yes, zenos are much harder to write than they look. Yours turned out beautifully.

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    1. Thank you so much Kay. Oh that computer of mine is quite the rascal!

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  9. Gorgeous poem and stunning quilt Cheriee, lots of fun comments above too–so glad you found your laptop, thanks!

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