Tag Archives: winter

Snow Bother / Speaking of Snow

I’m not sure I was ever passionately in love with snow, even as a child. But I certainly loved piles of snow when it meant getting a day off school. The school district here no longer has snow days. When the weather is bad, students have a Flexible Instruction Day, which means spending the day learning online. I feel bad for the elementary-age children especially. Peace to your ♥! 

Snow Bother

Don’t you wish the piles of snow
Would never ever ever go?
Or are you like my father,
Who considers snow a bother,
And always while he’s shoveling
Is wishing it were spring?

Speaking of Snow

“No more snow,” says Mama.
She’s had enough.
“No! MORE SNOW!” we cry.
We like the stuff.

We wake to white,
a wintry delight.

Mama groans.
“No, more snow,” she moans.
We bundle up, go out to play.
Only then do we shout “HOORAY!”

Seasonal Blues

Winter:
It’s cold. Bitter-bone-cold.
Better bundle up—brrr.
Old bones can’t take the cold.
All bundled up—brrr, brrr.

Summer:
It’s hot. Sticky-hot hot.
Fan going round—whirr, whirr.
Beer’s chilling, but I’m hot.
Fan spinning round—whirr, whirr.

NaPoWriMo22 Day 29 — Through murisopsis’s poetry scavenger hunt, I was introduced to the bob and wheel and blues stanzas forms. Here I’ve combined them. Peace to your ♥!

P.S. I’ll be going away for the weekend and may not get around to addressing comments until Monday. Also, I want to share a piece of good news: I learned yesterday that a sijo I submitted to the 2022 Sejong Writing Competition placed second. Yippee! It comes with a generous prize of $750. It was last April that one of Maureen Thorson’s napowrimo.net prompts was to write a sijo. She included a link to the Sejong Cultural Society’s guide to writing sijos, and that’s how I learned of the Writing Competition, which is open to Canadian and US residents only. The Society also sponsors an international sijo competition, open to all nationalities, that offers cash prizes. If you have any interest in the sijo form, I encourage you to enter one of these competitions. I’ll share my sijo once the winning entries have been posted to the Society’s website.

winterim

five o’clock shadows on stubbled slopes 
and the slow gold of the setting sun 
drenching all it touches—the world paused, 
poised to say goodnight

From NaPoWriMo 2017 day 5, to write a poem based on the natural world, and inspired by the following quote from an essay by G.K. Chesterton: “The evening was settling down between all the buildings with that slow gold that seems to soak everything….” I had written the quote in my poem starter notebook and added, “I know exactly the kind of evening light he means.” Peace to your ♥!

Pageant Tree

In springtime when your buds first show,
Delightfully I watch them grow,
So fresh and new after winter’s gray
I want to laugh and sing and play.


Yes, in springtime I am young and gay.

In summer when your boughs are full,
Your beauty’s irresistible.
I gaze upon your crown of green,
The loveliest I’ve ever seen.


Yes, in summer I am like a queen.

In autumn when your branches gold,
What stunning pageantry I behold
As the leaves that cluster at your breast
Scatter like jewels east and west.


Yes, in autumn I am richly dressed.

In winter when your limbs are bare,
With childlike wonder I stop and stare,
Entranced by your graceful whitened frame,
No two branches ever the same.


Yes, in winter I am quite the dame.

Years ago, after reading Myra Cohn Livingston’s book Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry, in which she describes five different types of poems, I wrote one of each kind using a tree-theme. I’ve previously posted “Truncated” (dramatic apostrophe) and “Possibility” (lyrical). “Pageant Tree” is a dramatic conversation. I’ll post the remaining two in the next two weeks. Peace to your ♥!

snowflakes and secrets

A single snowflake
Alight on your mitten. Oh!
Tiny miracle!
Not a word, not a breath now,
A brief wonder, and it’s gone.

© Stephanie Malley
Poem title from chapter 20 of poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge.

NaPoWriMo21 Day 19 – I didn’t use today’s NaPoWriMo.net prompt.

Since I was the one who suggested yesterday’s poemcrazy prompt, I was especially interested to see today’s showcased poem. I love what Poem Dive did with “The Answer Squash.”

I wrote this snowflake poem this morning. Seems appropriate to post it on the heels of yesterday’s snow angel. Peace to your ♥!