Poetry Month

 

I do love poetry month! It gives me an excuse to pen some ditties, (not that I really need an excuse, but still!), and challenges me to try for one a day. I don’t share them all, some I keep just for me. I do like to share them on Facebook and Instagram as my friends and family seem to enjoy them almost as much as I enjoy writing them. I also really like to take a photo of something and use it as a background for a poem. Sometimes the picture makes me think of the poem and other times I go looking for something to snap a picture of that will suit my verse. I’ve always liked sing-songy rhyming poems. I was remembering today how I spent an afternoon in my childhood with my friend Susie O. at her babysitter’s house and we wrote a rather long rhyming song like poem about the sitter’s basset hound whose name was Billy Jo. I wish I had that poem, or was still in touch with Susie. I remember how it began: “Oh Billy Jo, I just don’t know, about your toe, Oh! in the garden, I’ll beg your pardon….” Isn’t that silly? I think we were probably about 9 years old. She lived up the hill and around the corner and about half a block down from me. I recall being at her house one summer afternoon and a thunderstorm came. Her mother drove me home in her little Volkswagen Beetle. I remember both her mother and mine being angry because I didn’t run home when I heard the thunder before the rain started, it was torrential rain, too. Shortly after that, her mother remarried, her last name changed, and she moved away. It’s funny the things we remember.

This is something I am not likely to forget! Last week on Monday morning I looked out my kitchen window and was very surprised by what I saw in the branches of the Rose of Sharon—it looked like a submarine sandwich or a hot dog. Looking through the window screen it was hard to tell so I went outside and stood beneath it and saw that it was a half eaten baguette!  I took pictures and called my husband out to be a witness to the phenomenon, lest anyone think I was losing my mind and making up fantastic stories. He was just as flummoxed as I by it. We went about our errands and by the time we returned home it was gone. I still don’t know how it got there, or where it went, we assume a squirrel might be responsible, but I guess a large bird might be responsible. Of course I had to write a poem about it after one of my friends issued a challenge!

The background of this one is the Pequest River at our favorite hot dog spot, Hot Dog Johnny’s. It’s nice sitting watching the river and munching on arguably the best hotdogs ever. The Pequest feeds into the Delaware River, also there is a fish hatchery nearby, I’m pretty sure I went there with my daughter’s class when she was in elementary school. They breed the fish to stock the lakes and rivers for fishing season.

Sometimes the moon is quite bright even before the sun has completely set, and pictures never do it justice. Still, I liked the way it was framed by the lacy branches of the soon to be leaf covered Maple trees, and inspired this short verse that was liked by many of my friends. I think we all feel a bit pensive when gazing up at the moon.

So happy poetry month!