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So, every once in a while, I get to write poems with the Poetry Princesses, which is an intimidating thrill. First, we did the crown sonnet. Next up was the villanelle. And then, with barely time for a deep sigh of relief after we posted those in December, we somehow ended up embroiled in a new form, the rondeau redoublé (I won't mention whose fault that was). Huh. I'm noticing we never seem to pick a simple (not to say easy, but at least simple) form. I think next time I'm going to suggest an acrostic or something I've at least written before!

Anyway, today we are posting our rondeau redoublés, inspired by our theme of spring/fresh starts. I take some comfort from this online description: "The rondeau redoublé is not an easy form to write. It uses only two rhymes throughout, repeats whole lines, and has an awkward repeated half-line at the end." That was not a terribly inspiring thing to read as I started, but it was cold comfort as I struggled with the form.

I had been thinking about bears, and when we agreed on our theme, I decided to write from a bear's point of view as it emerges from hibernation. I wanted to write a poem accessible to older kids...say middle school or older, and here's what I came up with:

Old Bear, New Year

The darkness shrinks. The sun plays peekaboo.
It breaks the endless gloom of winter’s drear!
I shrug off hibernation’s residue—
It’s time I rose and met another year.

I fell asleep alone, but cubs are here!
How they arrived I haven’t got a clue.
One wild night and now…a souvenir?
The darkness shrinks. The sun plays peekaboo.

My front porch has a million-dollar view:
My favorite back-scratch birch and clover dear.
A lake--a mirror--glistens, navy blue.
It breaks the endless gloom of winter’s drear.

I’ve grown so thin I almost disappear!
A baby elk or rabbit’s overdue.
My stomach growls—it knows that dinner’s near.
I shrug off hibernation’s residue.

This world is not the autumn that I knew.
Spring forces me to be a pioneer.
There’s ground to cover—new weight to accrue.
It’s time I rose and met another year

Bright April makes its annual debut.
The buzz of bees is music to my ear.
My matted fur reflects the sun’s tattoo.
I lumber off, explore this new frontier.
The darkness shrinks.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

I wrote a first and then second draft in January and haven't had a chance to loo

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I did a fun Family Reading Night at a local school last night, and for the first time used my poetry treasure chest (more about that soon). The event was great, the kids were terrific, and if I had taken a pic of it, I'd share the fantastic group poem we wrote (shoot!) But I didn't, so I'll share the poem from the treasure chest they seemed to like best. It's from A Fuzzy-Fast Blur: Poems About Pets, and goes with a picture of some drooling bulldogs (who remind me a lot of my own drooling Captain Jack Sparrow). Slobbery Some think I wear a constant frown It's just my tongue that weighs me down! I love to loll and pant and drool And form a swishy, foamy pool Of spit that I can not keep in! It makes me smile a happy grin. I have a lot of tongue, it's true...      Shall I share a lick with you? --Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Jone at Check It Out has the Poetry Friday Roundup. So...check it out! You're sure to find something to drool over!

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I'm dashing out the door to present at a Young Authors Conference today, and my workshop involves writing poems about your fears and hopes. So I thought I'd share this poem that I wrote and shared back in 2007 about my biggest fear--a knock at the door with bad news.


Swallowed Whole

“I’m”
      he stands at the front door
      his face like a rubber sheet
      stretched over a toothpick scaffolding
      carrying death in the pocket of his
      navy blue uniform
      orderly, with perfect creases

“sorry”
      before another word crawls from his swamp-mouth
      I inventory:
      who’s not here?
      who will never be here again?
      then I know

my ribs collapse

disintegrate

shrieking winds
shred my empty
skin

my eyes are a blind camera
my legs are just an idea
my life—the future of the world—flashes through my head

      raptors screaming toward me, flapping savage wings
      mechanized gears grinding into me
      trout gasping for water...drying...dying 
      millions of pixels in chaos that form no picture
      ashes pouring down my throat 

my heart
     
     freezes, 
     
     shatters, 
     
     falls

like a white ash tree’s purple-bruised leaves
drifting into
early snow


---Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day has the Poetry Friday Roundup today. Enjoy!

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Like Liz at Liz in Ink, who by the way is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup today, I'm hoping to post more of my poems on Poetry Fridays. Mine will be mostly poems I do for various online poetry stretches, so they aren't actually finished poems, but I'm counting them anyway.

This week, the prompt at The Miss Rumphius Effect was to write a poem about winning or losing. An old drama/trauma from 3rd grade popped immediately into my head! You know, one of those events that you know rationally matters less than a fleabite. But you still hold it somewhere as one of THE events of your childhood. Scary what my brain holds onto.


R You Sure?

I missed the weekly spelling test—
I was shelving books in the library.

Miss Gracey told my friend Susan
to read me the 30 words.

The student with the highest grade
would go to the school spelling bee.

Only Susan had made a perfect score.
If I did, too, we would have a spell-off.

My chest shook.
Susan smiled her wide smile and began reading.

“Since.”
“I have known you since kindergarten.”

“Usually.”
“Usually, we get the same grades.”

“Surprise.”
“They hid behind the couch and yelled, ‘Soo-prise!’”

R?
No R?

I debated wildly for 30 seconds.
Susan smiled widely.

No R. No 30/30.
No spelling bee.

More than 30 years later,
Doubts still suRface.

Do I have a suRplus of suspicion?
Was I absuRd to think she lied?

She assuRed everyone it was a mistake.
Miss Gracey believed her.

Miss Gracey always believed the best about us.
But I am not suRe.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

If you're interested, I posted a list of online poetry prompts the other day. Try some out. You're sure to find a few that fit your schedule and pull some interesting words out of you.

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Last Friday, a group of seven of us, led by Liz Garton Scanlon of Liz in Ink, posted original villanelles. Mine was a nature-based poem called "Fierce."

I had wanted to do something other than a nature poem, because those feel like home, and I wanted to push myself out of the comforts of home. So I tried a war poem, written from a WWII veteran's point of view. I haven't glanced at it since I wrote it Thanksgiving week, so we'll see how it looks.

Wounded

Thanksgiving for my truth of yesterday—

for battling a stark, concrete regime…

But friends and hope both died along the way.

In war, my days were clear so far away.

My squad, my unit, one unbroken team:

thanksgiving for my truth of yesterday.

A bed, three meals, and comrades in the fray—

when going home was nothing but a dream—

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Maybe you've heard that Lee Bennett Hopkins, gifted poet and anthologist, was officially awarded NCTE's Excellence in Poetry for Children Award the weekend before Thanksgiving? I couldn't attend the Philadelphia conference because I was in Atlanta for a joyful family wedding, and it sounds like I missed a fantastic event. You can read Sylvia Vardell's post about it here.

Sylvia and poet Janet Wong did some anthologizing themselves, inviting children's poets (especially any who have worked with Lee) to submit a poem for a book in his honor. I was honored to be asked...and intimidated, too. I heard Harry Connick Jr. on the Graham Norton show talking about how he was so nervous performing at Frank Sinatra's 75th birthday party that he forgot the words. That's kind of how I felt. How do you write a poem for an iconic poet?

But over at The Miss Rumphius Effect, I had just done a few recipe poems for that week's Poetry Stretch. So I decided to do one for this anthology, too.

By the way, you still have a chance to win a copy of this anthology, Dear One, with everyone's tribute poems in it by visiting Sylvia's blog right now and leaving a comment!


Recipe for a Poetry Book

(for Lee, who reinvents the recipe for every feast he makes)

Pour hot ink from soul to bowl.
Combine with rhyme…

or not.

Mix in scarecrows, diamonds, dirt.
Splash with history, sunrise, socks.

Add a dash of salty tears.
Leaven with feathers, with clouds of hope.

Sift in sounds of sirens and leaves,
slamming doors, violin strings

Heat until mixture tumbles and boils,
trying to climb the sides of the pot.

Reduce to almost nothing.
Secretly, frequently lick the spatula.

Briskly whisk what’s left behind.
Whip a weightless world of words

Spread on artful glossy sheets.
Bake for barely-passing years.

Savor in country fields, battlefields, bleachers, and tents.
Serves the world. Stays fresh forever.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

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OK, I have poems about scary things on my mind this week. I just finished reading The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears (excellent book, by the way) and I'm also working on a lesson plan about fear and hope and poetry for a Young Authors Conference.

I grew up in Florida, and alligators are the animal I'm most afraid of. But after the movie Jaws came out when I was 8 years old, sharks were always in the back of my mind whenever I went to the beach and went swimming.

Shoal of Sharks

by Richard O'Connell

"Oh, look at all the porpoise!" someone shouted
While passengers ran to snap their cameras;
But what they leaned toward was a shoal of sharks
Before us, moving like a floating island:
A seething multitude of tails and fins
Fleeing the fury of a hurricane
Hundreds of miles away. They splashed and swarmed.
Slashing the sea to threads of hissing foam...

Read the second half of the poem here.

And because I apparently had bear attacks on the brain, here's the Monday poem I wrote for the Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect:

Bear Attack

Screaming.
Ripped nylon. Claws.
Brush crackles underneath
navy sky, moon as sole witness.
Light creeps through bare black branches to spotlight
burgundy shadows far below.
Sudden, dead air. Silence.
Night prays for more
screaming.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved


That's a poetic form called a rictameter, which none of us participants had ever heard of before! You can see all the Poetry Stretch poems here.

Gregory K. at Gotta Book has the Poetry Friday roundup today. Stop by and check it out!

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I felt like sharing a Billy Collins poem this morning, and "Picnic, Lightning" won the Poetry Friday lottery. I really love the tiny dark unmoored ship and the ending images of immersing yourself in the now, the ordinary moments that make live so vivid.

Picnic, Lightning

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three." 
                                                                                                               —Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out onto the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost

Read the rest here...

--Billy Collins, all rights reserved

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect has oodles of October poems from the poetry stretch this week, including several I wrote as daily poems.

The Poetry Friday Roundup today is at Anastasia Suen's Picture Book of the Day. Enjoy!

And only one week left to nominate your favorite poetry book of the year (and all the other categories) for a Cybils! Check it out here and start nominating.

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Today, I have a poem and a question to share with you. First, the question. I'm looking for recommendations of poetry journals for adults featuring accessible, mainstream poetry. I love Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, Jane Kenyon...so you can see I don't really go too much for the experimental stuff. Anyway, I'd like to possibly start submitting my adult poems to a few journals, but I'm trying to find out which ones are a good match for me so that I can subscribe and possibly submit. Would you share your favorites that seem to fit this description? Thanks!

And now the poem. Like last week's Without Rancor, this week's poem was written during my terrific class at the Loft this past spring. We were asked to write a praise song, and I decided I wanted to praise the downside, the darker side, the sometimes unappreciated side of life.

Without

Without plunging, a waterfall is only a river
     Praise the falling, the walling, the surprise of water standing on end

Without sinking, a sunset is only blinding light
     Praise the creeping of night and its battle for sky control 

Without night falling, the moon just hangs, a pale, cold rock
     Praise the backdrop of black, the reflected white glow of sun
 
Without wintering, summer overstays like holiday houseguests 
     Praise the sharp freshness of ice, the clean slate before spring

Without dying, life is a treadmill
     Praise deadlines and pressure, and the shortness to make time matter

Without ending, the story is unfinished
     Praise the anticipation, the fear, the delight of The End

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

I also participated in The Miss Rumphius Effect's Poetry Stretch, and you can see the results of this week's challenge here. People shared lots of fun haiku riddles!

And the ever-honest and generous Susan Taylor Brown is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week! Head on over and check it out. And have a great weekend!

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I took a wonderful poetry class at the Loft in Minneapolis last spring. One of our exercises was to write a poem with the word "rancor" in the title. Most of my poems are NOT actually about my personal experiences, though people often think they are. But for this assignment, I thought of my childhood, how I hated living in my parents' house and moved out at 16, and how glad I am that my parents and I have some small common ground to have a decent long-distance relationship now. And I wanted to play around with a few different ways of putting the word rancor into a poem through endings of lines connecting to beginnings of following lines. Here's the draft I wrote:

Without Rancor

Now that we are both adults
we can live without the rancor

of imbalance,
without rank

or status to give you power
over the books I read,

hiding Flowers for Algernon
in the file cabinet among real estate papers.

Without the limit of 5 hours of TV weekly,
charted on the refrigerator.

As a grown-up
I can rot my brain as much as I want.

Now I send you Benny Hill DVDs.
I wonder, do you chart your own TV hours?

I don’t want the
power nor the unpower.

I don’t want to perch on
one side of a scale, seeing who rises higher

whose worth hangs heavier.
I remember days when your words ran

currents through the house,
wafted up through the a/c vents,

and my sisters and I
lay with our ears pressed to registers,

waiting for cold metal secrets,
then wishing for deafness.

Now, I am content to share
a phone call every few weeks

where our conversation floats like
a small, yellow life-raft on a sea of rancor.

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Becky's Book Reviews! Go add some poetry to your day:>)

Just a reminder about Nikki Grimes' haiku contest on Facebook, too. Check it out here.

And if you're a fan of lovely rhyming nonfiction (I am), don't miss my post from earlier this week featuring Heidi B. Roemer's latest book, Whose Nest Is This?

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Shhh! Don't tell the Poetry Friday police! I'm posting a day early because I leave tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. for the airport to head to Chicago for ALA.

This week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect is all about recipe poems. On Monday and Tuesday, I wrote recipe poems for my daily poems.

Recipe for a Waterfall
(Best served outdoors on a hot day)

Pour water into riverbed—
Don’t measure, don’t level—
Drop in boulders
Mix until frothy
Scrape sides of banks clean
Add one cliff
Toss in gravity
Stretch sheets of liquid glass into bottomless bowl below
Sprinkle hawks overhead
Season with summer sun
Splash with a dash of wonder
Combine with mist
Let sit until you’ve had your fill or until evening's chill cools dish

How to Make a Bad Mood

 

Toss and turn all night

Combine broken alarm clock with morning detention

Roll your eyes at the ever-cheerful Ms. Lovejoy

Grind your teeth during music class

Measure each insult thrown your way

Peel back politeness

Pinch the piccolo player next to you on the bus

Stew over having to share a bedroom—not fair!

Scald your little sister by ignoring her “Guess what!”

Simmer when your parents don’t notice you're mad

Bring your mood to a full boil

Melt down

Beat yourself up

Cover yourself with blankets and turn on your iPod

Chill out and hope tomorrow is better

--poems by Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

It's not too late for you to cook up your own poems! Check out the Poetry Stretch info here, and see the results here. They're delicious!

And the wonderful Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup at Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup!

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This week's Poetry Stretch  over at Miss Rumphius Effect is about fairy tales. My WIP is actually a collection of poems all with a certain hook and related to fairy tales, but I can't share one of those here. So here's a different one, for an older teen audience.

Obsession

by Prince Charming

 

I thought the glass shoe

Was just a quirk

 

It got my attention

Certainly

And had all the kingdom talking

 

But my wife really harbors an unhealthy passion for shoes

            Slippers, mules, pumps, boots

            Velvet, leather, fur, tapestry

She whispers the words in her sleep

            gentle

                        terrifying

 

She would rather shoe-shop than

Dine with me

            What is food compared to the sleek sweetness of a perfect heel?

 

She would rather shoe-shop than

Play with our children

            What is laughter compared to the metric knocking of heels on slate floors?

 

She would rather shoe-shop than

Breathe

            What is life without the right shoes to live it?

 

I have found her

Reclining on our closet’s stone floor

Ruining a silk gown

Admiring

Towers of soles and heels looming overhead

 

And I wonder:

How many pairs of shoes does it take to make a princess happy?

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Thanks, Tricia! You have some fantastic poems in your comments. Wow!

It's not too late to join in--just click on the link above!

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OK, not the plagiarism part, but an effect of it.

Just recently, my husband was asking if I worry about people taking poems I post online and posting them elsewhere or publishing them as their own. The reality of that crosses my mind occasionally, but I try not to focus on that because I don't want to hoard my poems--I want to have fun with them, and most of the ones I post are just exercises and practice that I haven't invested much time on.

Then Saturday night, I got the funniest comment on an old blog post.

Way back in February of 2008, I participated in Miss Rumphius' Monday Poetry Stretch, and posted this poem. It hasn't crossed my mind nor anyone else's in ages. So I got a good laugh from this anonymous comment:

According to statcounter.com, this comment was indeed sent from a New York computer, so I'm taking it at face value. I love that not only did this person say nice things about my poem but he or she took the time to do a quick internet search--something I didn't do when I taught 8th grade because PCs weren't really around (though it was after the extinction of the dinosaurs, I swear). AND the teacher took the time to insult the plagiarizer and send me a note! A clever note. How could I not love that?

At one point, I thought about posting my poems as photos to make it a little harder for kids to plagiarize them, but, well, it was just too much of a hassle. And after this comment, I realized that that would also thwart teachers' searches. Is there some html code I can add to prevent copying text on my blog on those days I post poems? I think there is, but I don't know what it is. If anyone has that handy, I'd sure appreciate it.

Happy Tuesday! I'm off to present at a Young Author's Conference today!

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A couple of weeks ago, Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect participated in a challenge and shared her favorite D things, a letter assigned randomly to her by Julie Larios, who had praised P.

Well, cool. I emailed Tricia to get a letter, and she sent me B. I started listing all the things I love that start with B, and I ended up turning it into a song sung to the tune of "My Favorite Things."


My Favorite (B) Things

Musical Beagle with low plaintive Baying
Birch trees in mighty winds Bending and swaying
Slow Bagpipes haunting, while wild church Bells ring,
These are a few of my favorite things

Butter that’s melted on Bread steaming, wispy
Bacon cooked salty and almost-Burned crispy
Brownies, Bananas, and Baked Bagel rings
These are a few of my favorite things

When the car Breaks
When the Bills come
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

Two grandest Billies are Both Beloved writers 
Books and now Blogs are my daily delighters
Well-written words always make my Brain sing
These are a few of my favorite things

Sunsets on Beaches with Boats in the distance
Bathing suit fitting with little resistance
Bonnet shells, sand dollars, pale angel wings
These are a few of my favorite things

When the Book fails
There are no sales
When reviews are Bad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so sad

--Laura Purdie Salas

P.S. The two Billies are poet Billy Collins and musician/songwriter Billy Joel


What I loved about this exercise was that it was a good reminder that the things I love in this world far, far outweigh the things I don't. What an opportunity to praise things!

I did have to leave out some B things I love, though. My family couldn't take my walking around humming "My Favorite Things" anymore! For the record, here's the rest of the list:

Backrubs
Bluetooth
Belief
Beginnings

If you'd like a random letter, email me (by clicking on my website graphic, entering my site, and clicking on Contact) and I'll send you one! [Addendum: Or do it the easier way and just ask for it in the comments!]

Speaking of Julie Larios, she's the host of Poetry Friday today. Check out the roundup here!

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Tricia's Poetry Stretch this week at The Miss Rumphius Effect is to write a personal ad poem from an animal or literary character. I used my beagle, Captain Jack Sparrow, who is the most love-hungry dog I know!

Captain Jack Sparrow: Single Beagle Looking for Love I’m single I’m tri-colored Begging’s my game   When meat Disappears Somehow I get the blame   I’m dashing And handsome (My ears are quite large)   I’m happy To share half my Slobber—no charge!   I’d love A sweet lady Who wears eau d’death   Who drives Me quite wild With her livery breath   I’m looking For fun-- Is that such a crime?   Let’s roll In the grass— Have a howling good time   Call 1-800-SPARROW --Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

There's still plenty of time to play! Check out the link above and write your own personal ad poem!

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I'm trying to find the time to participate in the Poetry Stretch each week at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Tricia always has great ideas, and I always want to give them a try, but often the week is gone before I realize it. I'm trying to do better.

This week's stretch is to write a poem in terza rima--click here to read the post. I've only written a couple of these, both, I think, when I was working on large collections, and I used that as an opportunity to try just about every poetic form I can find. But it's been several years, so I was kind of intimidated by this week's assignment.

We had a snow/wind storm a few days ago, and going outside afterward to walk Captain Jack, it was like the end of the world. It was dusk, and it was like I was the only person left alive on the planet. Very eerie. I decided to try to capture that mood. And then yesterday I got some news from someone I work with in the publishing industry, some news that makes me sad and anxious and nervous. It's not public yet, so I'll wait before sharing, but it made that isolated feeling stronger. I tried to find an image from my stock photo company that captured the desolation, but this is as close as I could come--not all that close! Oh well. Without further excuses, here's my attempt at a terza rima:

 

Tarnished Silver Temperature dives—four degrees below zero. Snow blows down the bare street, carelessly seizes the emptiness, gives it a grey ghostly glow, bathes this world in the twilight of semi-night. There is no one new you will ever know, just you, and the moon, and reflected light— frozen in time, forever alone. Sky dead above, ground eerily bright. Black limbs of trees, like autumn’s bones, etch endless sky as wind whistles and hones its sharp, stripping skills in this bleak, leaden zone. --Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

It's not too late to join in. This is an interesting form that lets you play with rhyme while not constraining you to a particular meter. Zip on over and check out Miss Rumphius' post and give it a try!
 

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OK, I admit I'm feeling distressed today at all the layoffs, firings, and restructurings in the children's publishing world. I'm not a big businessperson, and I don't really know all the implications of yesterday's bloodbath at HMH, S&S, etc. But I'm waiting to hear whether two editors I either have books in progress with or have verbal offers from have survived. What a scary time to be in publishing.

So...I wrote my morning poem from a place of fear this morning, I'm afraid.

Resignations, Restructuring, Layoffs, and Buyouts

Bleak outlook; financial worry

causes a flurry as

owners—jury—decide which

editors to ditch. Just

one glitch:

 

no more books?  

---Laura Purdie Salas

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect gave a climbing rhyme as this week's challenge. The rhyming word goes from word 4 to word 3 to word 2, and at that point word 4 in the line becomes the new rhyme. I've never tried this before, and it was a fun exercise. Go check out the gorgeous poems (much more poetic and lovely than my rant) that have been shared.

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I wanted to share a spooky Halloween poem, but then figured I should just go ahead and  make a total fool of myself and share a video of me reading one of my own.



I'm a terrible performer, but my daughter Maddie and I had fun doing this!

Sylvia Vardell at Poetry for Children has the Poetry Friday Roundup today. Happy Halloween!

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Wow. Thank you so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes yesterday. I felt like I had won the best award ever. I had two meetings to go to yesterday, one not so bad, but one at my daughter's school that I was dreading.  Your funny, surprising, lovely poems scattered throughout the day made me feel ready to face anything...and the meeting went extraordinarily well...better than my husband and I could have hoped.

Susan Taylor Brown at susanwrites, you are such a sweetie with a gift for friendship. Honestly, I can barely keep up with my family members' birthdays! Thank you for sending your readers over to give me such a great wishes.

My blogging lately has been rushed, and I haven't had much time for reading blogs and connecting with others. I miss it. I'll be turning in my last book of the four due this week either today or tomorrow. Then I hope things will settle down to their normal level of chaos, and I can start catching up.




Photo courtesy of morguefile.com.

I wrote my own 15 Words or Less poem last night to sum up how I feel about the kidlitosphere:

Embraced

on dark nights
when my own light dims
I lie among brilliant stars--
delightful sky-meadow

--Laura Purdie Salas

So, what do these stars remind you of? The first time you got away from the city and were amazed by the night sky? Or the first time you went to the city and the stars disappeared? Watching a space shuttle night launch? Walking around the lake with your first boyfriend? The plight of poor Pluto? Go with whatever strikes you and  write a quick 15 Words or Less poem. Remember, it doesn't have to describe this photo. The picture is just a jumping-off point. If you've never played before, check out the guidelines in the sidebar. Leave your poem in a comment and I'll include it in my post of poems tomorrow. Have fun! And thanks again.

Please put your byline, however you would like it, after your poem. Thanks!

P.S. If you remember my delirium over sticky toffee pudding and Diet Irn-Bru, both of which I discovered in Scotland last spring, you'll know how much I enjoyed having both yesterday. Randy made the cake and he ordered the soda from an import company!

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