We are past mid-February in the poem-a-day month I am sharing with my poetry group. As anticipated, I feel more at-ease with the project than I did last year–in fact the month seems to be going by a bit fast.

In honor of Poetry Friday, I’m posting a few of my February poems. Visit Linda Baie’s web site, teacherdance, for links to more Friday poetry.

February 4: I am co-teaching an afterschool poetry class which began this month, so February has been doubly rich with poetry. We started with cinquains. One of my students finished her first and asked if there was time for a second. With about 10 minutes left, I thought it was borderline, but said, “yes, go ahead.” Less than 10 minutes later this nine-year-old came back to me and had written a very clever cinquain that was also an acrostic. I still needed to write a poem that day, so after class, I challenged myself to an acrostic cinquain. For the record, this little poem took me more than 10 minutes to write.

Cool drops
Latch together
Out over oceans, high
Up above mountains, hills, plain, then
Drop rain.

© Karin Fisher-Golton, 2014

February 8: I am not usually a big acrostic person, but I wrote another I like this month. February is full of surprises.

Luminous Arc

Rainbow—
Apple-y red fire engine arches
Insistent citrus orange-color California poppy
New day, new light, new yolk yellow then
Boreal lush-living wet grassy green over
Ocean sky blueberry blue to indigo
Wowing plum purple-y violet complete

© Karin Fisher-Golton, 2014

February 9: The moment described in “Picture This” had me thinking, “There’s a poem in that!” One benefit of poem-a-day month is that I notice even more poetry in life than usual.

Picture This

today I saw a woman with a phone hovering
over a parking lot planting strip

my device-judgment radar on high
I cursed the ubiquitousness of phones

then realized she was taking a photo
but of what? curiosity slowed me down

I looked as I passed and saw a
dew-covered web tucked in green
 
I glimpsed a world where cell phones
make people halt for beauty and art

© Karin Fisher-Golton, 2014

February 12: Some February days it’s handy to have a short poem possibility. One of the members of our group remembered the 11-syllable lantern poem. We are enjoying it and not just for its brevity.

      Above

        sky
     expanse
realm for wings
 sector of stars
      space

© Karin Fisher-Golton, 2014

February 19: Laura Shovan at Author Amok is doing a month of poetry prompts based on sounds, another synergy with our poem-a-day month. I highly recommend heading over there and delving into the excellent array of poems on 19 February days, so far. It is fascinating to see how different poets respond to the same sound. Today I was inspired by this sound:

Museum Stairwell
 
in the museum’s grand stairs there are echoes—
echoes of conversation, echoes of anticipation
conversation anticipation stairwell
echoes off metal, echoes off marble
metal marble stairwell
echoes of art, echoes of story
art story stairwell
stairwell echoes
echo

© Karin Fisher-Golton, 2014