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Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week, we are fortunate to have the kind and charming Patricia Franz as our host. Patricia offers us a peek at her wish list for Santa this year. Please enjoy visiting all of the Poetry Friday poets at Patricia's blog Reverie.
Recently, I found a massive Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of The English Language, Unabridged (© 1975) at a book swap.
I picked it up, thinking that I might use its large pages for wrapping paper or art projects, but as I started paging through, I realized that I mightn’t have the heart to shred it. This five-inch-thick behemoth boasts finger notches, speckled page edges, and most importantly that musty old-book smell.
Do you love the smell of books? The first thing I do when browsing in a bookstore is take a deep inhale. Apparently, my dog enjoys “book smell” too because she keeps walking by and sniffing this dictionary. She also sneaks a quick lick if she thinks I'm not looking. I digress.
Among other contents, this relic includes:
- The Indo-European Family Tree of Languages
- An Outline of the History of the English Language
- Sub-dictionaries of: Biography, Geography, Noted Names in Fiction, Mythology, and Legend, Foreign Words and Phrases, and Scripture Proper Names
- Common Abbreviations
- Practical Business Mathematics
- Forms of Address
- Tables of Weights and Measures
- Special Signs and Symbols (Did you know there are symbols for Mercury, Venus, Mars?)
- Presidents of the USA (With a 1975 copyright, how did they know Jimmy Carter would be president in 1977?)
- Vice Presidents and Cabinet Officers
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Constitution of the United States
- A Brief History of Canada (Why only and specifically Canada, I wonder?)
- Charter of the United Nations
- Air Distances between Cities
- Geographical Features of the World
- Commercial and Financial Terms
Phew! No wonder it is so thick.
Also, it contains words. Lots of words.
There are some fun and old-timey words.
Of course, I had to try to mash these (almost) randomly-chosen words into a quick poem:
The Injured Gribble
Whilst perched upon my buckboard bench,
absorbed within a dream,
I came upon an injured gribble,
poppling in a stream*.
He’d clung among his gribble peers –
a glomerous, wet hunk.
Quickly, I discerped the fellow
from that gunky chunk.
I wrapped him scarfwise in my kerchief,
trying not to wrick,
and if you know your gribbles well,
you'll know that was a trick!
Thenadays, we all believed
that gribbles made good pets.
Nowadays, I have to say,
I’m having some regrets.
*Let's assume it was at least a brackish stream, as gribbles live in salt water.
As for the gribble, he's actually kind of cute. 
Gribble, © Britannica
Well, the poem leaves something to be desired (it borders on the nonsense poem that I wrote several weeks ago), but it was a fun exercise!
Now, what to do with this brick of a dictionary...
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Today is Poetry Friday! Please visit our wonderful host Anastasia at Small Poems for the story of her first poem sale. It will make you smile! You will also find lots of yummy poem goodness from our many Poetry Friday friends.
Recently, I had the opportunity to see Audie Cornish interview of Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker. This is rather heavy, so brace yourself.
Ken Burns (source: Wikipedia)
Several topics stood out during the conversation for me. Due to his multi-year research and work on both his Civil War documentary and his WWII documentary, Ken had interesting perspectives on those wars individually as well as their intersections. Here are my notes on some of Ken’s comments:
Confederate Flags: The origin of what we consider to be the “Confederate Flag” today was not the primary flag used by the Confederacy during the Civil War. In fact, it was unpopular in many states because of its resemblance to the US flag. The “Southern Cross” version of the Confederate flag that we see today was a battlefield flag that gained popularity among various states around 1954, following the Brown v. Board of Education decision when the US Supreme Court decided that school segregation violated the fourteenth amendment. Mississippi and Georgia added the Confederate flag to their state flags as a form of protest. [Incidentally, the term “Southern Cross” also refers to the “Crux Constellation” visible from the southern hemisphere.]
Reich Citizenship Laws: The Nuremburg Laws, passed by Nazi Germany in 1935 to discriminate against Jewish citizens as a basis for the Holocaust, were modeled after US Jim Crow segregation laws. For more on this, see here.
Hilter’s Intentions: During an interview for Ken Burns’s WWII documentary, a US soldier from Waterbury, CT, spoke of his discussion with a captured Nazi soldier. The Nazi soldier, in accent-free English, asked the US soldier where he was from. He replied, “The United States.” The German soldier asked, “Where in the United States?” The US soldier replied, “The Northeast.” During continued questions from the German solider, who nodded understanding throughout, the US soldier told the German soldier that he was from: Connecticut … Waterbury … near the Naugatuck River. The German soldier asked if he lived near where Naugatuck River met a small steam (the US soldier said that you could practically jump across that stream). The US solider was amazed that the German soldier had such specific knowledge of the United States, so he asked how the German soldier knew such details. The German soldier responded that he had been through training, and he assigned to command that region of the United States when Germany took over.
Other Miscellaneous Commentary from Ken Burns:
- Humans communicate best through storytelling.
- Ken Burns quoted Mark Twain, who may have said, “History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme.”
- Throughout history, people have tended to organize their societies under dictators. Sometimes people favor dictatorship when the dictator shares their opinion, but once power is relinquished to a dictator it cannot be taken back.
- Be involved with government.
- Nothing is binary. Something can be true while its opposite is also true. It is important to understand the complexities of situations.
- Although people’s attention spans seem to have decreased, there still exists an appetite for deeper understanding. Ken cited binge-watching as an example of this phenomenon.
Here is a poem by Witter Bynner (1881-1968) that feels apropos.
War
Fools, fools, fools,
Your blood is hot to-day.
It cools
When you are clay.
It joins the very clod
Wherein you look at God,
Wherein at last you see
The living God
The loving God,
Which was your enemy.
To quote Ken Burns: There is no "them." There is only "us."
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This week, I had the opportunity to spend a day wandering the streets of Boston with no agenda besides starting at Quincy Market and ending near MIT on the other side of the Charles River before dark. I salivated at the chance to do some people watching and listening – inspired by Alan Wright’s blog post a couple weeks ago.
Many people intrigued me, from the man on the park bridge playing a mournful melody on an amplified string instrument, stopping abruptly every thirty measures or so, to nip a bite of sandwich … to the gaggle twenty professional perfume spritzers at Macy’s, each deeply concerned that I take a whiff of a new designer scent. Do you suppose Macy’s pays by the spritz? But a man who plunked down next to me at a table in Quincy Market fascinated me the most.
First, I must explain the setting. Quincy Market always delights with vendor after vendor displaying scrumptious treats. This day, I noticed something new – a vending machine that turns out a stick of cotton candy while you wait.
I watched the instructional video, which outlined these steps:
- Insert cash and stand back.
- Machine whirs to life and blows sugar webs.
- Stick on robotic arm pokes out, rotates 90 degrees, and winds a pouf of candy.
- Arm rotates to vertical and two robotic “hands” pat the candy cloud into a uniform ball.
- Meanwhile, a new color of candy fluff billows below.
- Robotic arm swoops down and winds another layer.
- Robotic hands pat the mass into a uniform shape.
- Voila! Arm pokes completed treat out through a window where the stick can be snapped free.
While the machine was entertaining, I was not in the mood for cotton candy at 10:30 in the morning. I moved on, purchased a yogurt parfait, and found a table with my back against the wall where I could set up for some serious people watching.
As if on cue, an older man holding a stick of cotton candy pulled out a stool next to mine and slid in. First, he admired his candy cloud. Then he took selfies, smiling and posing with his treat. I offered to take the picture for him, but he was so engrossed that he did not seem to hear me. He stuffed his phone in his pocket and got to work. Skillfully, quickly, he pulled off layer after layer and munched. There was no lingering, no allowing the sticky sweetness to dissolve into his tongue. No, he had more to see. Now the cotton candy stood between him and his next discovery. He brushed off his hands, grabbed his backpack with his tourist-group tag hanging from its zipper, and hustled away. Who was waiting, perhaps on the other side of the world, to see him smiling with his fluffy treat?
Exploring Boston
Contraption discovered!
A new-fangled toy
whirs and produces
sugar-spun joy.
Plunk at a table,
send picture to home,
gulp down my treat.
Where next to roam?
For some Poetry Friday treats, please visit the kind and incomparable Irene Latham at Live Your Poem!
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Happy Poetry Friday! Please visit Karen Edmisten for some fall reflections and to hear from all of the Poetry Friday poets.
Today’s post mixes math and poetry. First, I made a little origami star out of a book page (Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, if you were wondering what book).
THEN, I wanted to make a BIG origami star. I started by gluing a bunch of book pages together.
Because the instructions for making this star start with a regular pentagon (regular meaning all sides are the same length), I had to do a quick high school geometry refresher to figure out how to draw a perfect pentagon. I needed to know what size the interior angles of a pentagon should be:
The sum of interior angles of a polygon = (n-2) x 180,
where n is the number of sides in the polygon (which, for a pentagon = 5), so
(5-2) x 180 = 3 x 180 = 540 degrees = the sum of all of the interior angles
For a regular pentagon (where all sides are of equal length),
each interior angle = (the total number of degrees) divided by (the number of angles (or sides)).
So, for a pentagon:
540 / 5 = 108 degrees = the size of each interior angle.
OK! Now, to find a protractor, which I have not used in … a while. Surprisingly, I had three.
BOOM! Pentagon (1 foot per side).
(Please ignore the pencil marks from my initial incorrect angle measurement.)
About 25 folds later, VOILA! Big star.
Now for the poetry! Turns out, there are a lot of poems that reference origami or use it as a metaphor for life. Interestingly, of the poems I found, very few were metrical, in spite of origami’s precise, repetitive, dare I say rhyming folds (no, I probably shouldn’t have dared). But, I get it -- somehow, origami feels like it belongs with free verse.
Thus, here is a poem by B. Sue Johnson. For more background on this poem, see here.
Folding Paper
origami life
fold, then fold again
your hands persuading paper
to accept the creases and expand
into a bird
or a flower
while each passing day
adds a wrinkle to your skin
This poem by Joyce Sutphen begins:
Origami
It starts
with a blank sheet,
an undanced floor,
air where no sound
erases the silence.
As soon as
you play the first note,
write down a word,
step onto the empty stage,
… for the full poem click here.
Lastly, here is one that I wrote:
Origami Swan
your
t
i
n
y
origami criticisms
will never fold me
into a swan
© 2023, Tracey Kiff-Judson
So ... "origami criticisms" made perfect sense to me when I wrote it (criticisms that are like origami, i.e. repetitive little creases/folds/digs), but upon rereading, it sounds like criticisms of origami, which is not what I meant. Ah well, an imperfect poem --
and to go with the imperfect poem, my imperfect origami swan that went horribly wrong somewhere around fold 24. : )
If you’d like to give the origami star a try, click here for instructions. For the swan, click here (just don't look at my swan for reference!). Most likely, you will make one much better than mine!
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Welcome to November and to Poetry Friday!
Please visit our Poetry Friday host Buffy Silverman, who shares some pre-winter wonders and this week's roundup!
From me, just a short video and commentary about a millipede that I met on the street ...
Millipede
Millipede struts, and she’s
never a klutz with her
toes ticking lightly in time.
Thinks she’s von Furstenberg –
more like "the Worst-enberg!”
Vanity should be a crime.
© 2023 Tracey Kiff-Judson
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Happy Poetry Friday!
For this week's roundup and some batty fun, visit Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard and wish Carol a Happy Birthday!
It’s That Time of Year
Last night a troll rap-tapped my door,
holding out an empty sack.
I shooed him off and said, “Goodnight!”
A minute later he was back.
This time he brought a Pikachu.
They stared at me, their bags outstretched.
I tossed in candy, and they left.
What’s going on? Is this far-fetched?
BING-BONG-BING! My doorbell chimed.
Again, I schlepped to my front door.
A mermaid and a rubber duck
threw stubby shadows on my floor.
These strangers only left in peace
when plied with full-sized candy bars.
Again, again the doorbell BONGED.
They started pulling up in cars.
Turtles, ninjas, ninja turtles,
Barbie, Ken, The Joker, Hook,
Elivs, Woody, Cousin It,
a lipstick in a pocketbook...
Alice and the Queen of Hearts,
a sumo wrestler, Pete The Cat,
Uncle Sam, a witch, a shrew,
a dragon, and a toothy bat…
Spiderman and Peter Pan,
a blow-up beach ball on a beach,
Coraline and Frankenstein,
Mario and Princess Peach.
At nine, the last bunch rang my bell –
a gaggle of racoon-eyed ghouls.
I bet you think it’s Halloween.
Well, it’s not.
It’s …
APRIL FOOLS'!
© 2023 Draft Tracey Kiff-Judson
(Perhaps this would have been better timed in APRIL?!)
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Happy Poetry Friday!
Thank you to Bridget at wee words for wee ones for hosting this week’s roundup, where you will find a dance party going down!
This week, I was playing around with sounds and meter in an attempt to come up with a nonsense poem, and I wondered …
- What makes something nonsense verse?
- Who are the most well-known nonsense poets?
- Is there a poet who was well-known, but so terrible at writing poetry that people considered his/her work to be nonsense?
Let's discuss!
After poking around, it became clear to me that there are different interpretations of what qualifies as nonsense verse. I found multiple descriptions:
- Comical rhyming poetry (in general),
- Silly rhyming verse where some of the content doesn’t make sense, such as many nursery rhymes (e.g. Hey-Diddle-Diddle), and
- Verse where most of the words are made up, and although the overall construct sounds right to the ear, the verse may or may not make sense literally.
In other words, there seems to be a spectrum of nonsense verse ranging from:
Humorous Verse ------------------------------------------------- Jibberish with rhyme and meter
Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Edward Gorey, Colin West, Dr. Seuss, and Spike Milligan are all listed by Wikipedia as well-known nonsense verse writers. You may have heard of them all, but if you’d like a refresher, this article has poetry samples from most of them.
sketch by Edward Lear
This brings me to Lewis Carroll. “Jabberwocky” is what started me thinking about nonsense. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass pack a whole lot of nonsense, and on the surface, “Jabberwocky” sounds like total nonsense. Here is the first stanza:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The Jabberwock, illustrated by John Tenniel, 1871
To me, Jabberwocky, feels like reading words in another language. When strung together, the words feel like they should make sense. It has a satisfying mouthfeel and flow. One senses that there is a story line just beyond reach, and indeed there is. Upon closer inspection, many of the words are blends of two words (portmanteaus), and the story seems to follow a typical hero’s journey. For an analysis of the poem, look here. For my taste, nonsense needs to flow and make enough sense to not be completely frustrating.
On to my last question: who is widely regarded as the worst poet of all time? Several internet articles give that inauspicious honor to William Topaz McGonagall. How does one become the worst poet? Well, in McGonagall’s case, he wrote a poem about a bridge collapse and train wreck called “The Tay Bridge Disaster” (and other similarly-crafted works).
Tay Bridge Disaster, a contemporary rendition, Wikipedia
“The Tay Bridge Disaster” by William McGonagall starts:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”
If you feel so inclined, you can read the rest of the poem here and more about McGonagall here. I like the article’s reference to his “ill-advised imagery.”
All of the above, led me to write the following …
The Lonestie Wolfree and the Fervile Fletch
A lonestie wolfree hibbed by the swersh,
and foofed per dreebs devay.
She vonged for a titch and a frick-frack-frock,
but her bargle strowed reblay.
One day, she gloamed on a fervile fletch,
and beesh she mooged him sown.
Her mooging varged on the mincey fletch
and tetch belarved him floan.
Yes, agreed – utter nonsense!
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Happy Poetry Friday! Continuing with my macabre October theme…
We’re on a camping trip in Transyl … er … PENNsylvania, and we’re staying at a campground where gnomes outnumber campers by a solid fifty to one. After what happened last night … I am not a fan of these diminutive dudes.
Opposite of an Ode to Gnomes
While walking on a woodland trail,
wee elfin creatures made of stone
appear and grin their winsome smiles…
I wish that I were not alone.
Oh, silly me! They’re innocent.
They joke and pose in pointed hats!
Frozen with their vacant stares …
it not as if they’re vampire bats! 
The sun has fallen from the sky.
I hope that I can make it home.
I’m think I’m on the safest path.
Oh, look – a darling, helpful gnome!
Morning dawns, and I awake.
My mind is dizzy, vision blurred.
I think I may have cut my head.
I feel confused; my speech is slurred.
I stumble weakly from the woods.
It's coming back … the memories flood.
Hey, there’s the gnome I met last night!
What’s on his lips? Is that my … BLOOD?
Bwa-ha-happy Poetry Friday the 13th!
Ok, after this clunker, you might be better off checking out Catherine's lovely poem
and review of Irene Latham's The Museum on the Moon,
at Poetry Friday: The Roundup is Here! – Reading to the Core
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October
October is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 – 1906
See the rest of the poem here.
Now that October has arrived, ‘tis open season on all things creepy and macabre. As an aside, I’ve noticed a pattern -- my posts seem to rotate among: nonsensical, terrifying, and disgusting. Somehow, this week, I have managed to combine all three.
A few days ago, I saw a ring of turkey vultures hanging in the murky, evening sky. They usually circle lazily in a group of twenty or so, and they always stir a tiny pool of dread in the pit of my stomach.
Undertakers
Turkey vultures circle death,
ring around a broken beast
whispering its final breath.
Now begins the evening feast.
© Tracey Kiff-Judson 2023
You can enjoy a less gloomy Poetry Friday with Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme! Stop by and learn The Thing to Know About Stargazing!
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OOOPS! If you ended up on this post for Poetry Friday on October 20, 2023, please click here to get to the correct post. Sorry for the confusion!
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In researching the formation of earth, I went down a wormhole on the NASA website that ultimately led me to this video: TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time
WOW! It projects the future at an exponentially increasing rate of speed from the year 2019 through the end of time. It is lengthy (I guess it takes a while to travel through virtual eternity!), but it's mind-blowing. I recommend the entire video, but even if you watch just the first couple minutes, it is thought-provoking.
It's also a lot to grasp – both intellectually and emotionally. In the existence of the universe, only during pinpoint periods of time, can intelligent life exist -- and here we are! The point in time when time ceases to exist (or at least becomes irrelevant) is hard to comprehend. The thought of creating or jumping to a parallel universe is mind bending. This video left me feeling the simultaneous pertinence and insignificance of this moment.
Pertinent Impermanence
A speck of time:
a flag flutter,
a leaf turn,
a minnow ripple,
a sunbeam,
each particle of now,
will not exist
in the future.
Nothing will be
exactly
as it is now
in the next
nanosecond.
I offer these minnows for your consideration. : )
Time is fleeting! Enjoy this Poetry Friday by visiting Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup!
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Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash
Thanks to Marcie Flinchum Atkins, I have fallen in under the spell of the double dactyl. As Marcie referenced in her recent blog post, the double dactyl was popularized in the 1960’s in the publication Esquire magazine and later in the collection Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander.
Double Dactyl Form Rules:
- 2 stanzas of dactylic verse, usually with a silly tone
- Stanza 1:
- line 1 – a jingle or "spell," in the meter /uu/uu (DUM-da-da DUM-da-da)
- line 2 – a name, in the meter /uu/uu
- line 3 – information about the person, in the meter /uu/uu
- line 4 – meter /uu/ (DUM-da-da-DUM)
- Stanza 2:
- line 5 – meter /uu/uu
- line 6 – meter /uu/uu
- line 7 – meter /uu/uu
- line 8 – meter /uu/ and must rhyme with line 4
where "u" is an unstressed beat/syllable, and "/" is a stressed syllable, so the meter has a DUM-da-da DUM-da-da rhythm. DUM-da-da is called a "dactyl," so doubling gives the term "double dactyl."
So here goes …
Booboo Baboingity
Springity sproingity,
Booboo Baboingity
Sprang from a bridge with a
Leap and a prayer.
Bungee cord snapped in two.
Last thing I heard was Boo
Yelling out something -- I
think was a swear.
Hmmm. Maybe I had better keep practicing.
Happy Poetry Friday! This week, be sure to stop by and visit Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink for all things poetic!
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“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Many (dare I say most?) poems call attention to details, or as Irene Latham says, “Explode the moment.” Many poets pay close attention to the visual details around them to gain inspiration for their poetry. They observe and stash away snippets. Then they are deviled by the details of sorting through the scraps of words that they have collected and stitching them together into a beautiful poem.
I have a “detail noticing” challenge for you, but first some background: when I was little, my mother would occasionally buy Games Magazine for me. My favorite puzzle was a series of extremely close-up photographs. The challenge was to identify the depicted object with just that visual snippet of information. Through the magic of cropping, I present to you a series of such photos. Feel free to guess the subject of each picture. Observing the tiny details helps!
If you'd like a clue or two:
- Sipper
- Ache preventer
- Protector
- I’ve always felt this way
- That’s just how I roll
- Not kidney, not jelly, not garbanzo
How many did you figure out? In case any of these eyeball benders have you stumped, you can find the answers at the end of last week’s blog post.
Here is a wonderful example of observing details – the poem “Winter Trees” by William Carlos Williams, which starts:
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
to read the rest of Winter Trees, please click here.
To see the details observed by others this Poetry Friday, please visit our poetic host Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for this week's roundup.
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A couple of weeks ago, my son and I were playing around with our phone cameras trying out various night settings. I think we captured the Milky Way in this picture because there were no clouds out that night.
The Rock Next Door to Mars
Can you hear me?
Can you see me?
Are you out there
‘tween the stars?
I’m here waving,
starlight saving,
on the rock next
door to Mars.
Photo and poem © Z. Judson and T. Kiff-Judson 2023
If you have an Android phone (not sure about Apple) and you download a camera extension app called “Expert RAW.” It has an “Astrophoto” setting that will allow you to take longer-exposure night pictures. We tried it with the August supermoon, but the moon was actually TOO bright and looked like the sun. Happy star gazing!
Please visit the amazing Amy Ludwig Vanderwater at The Poem Farm for more Poetry Friday excitement!
The answers to The Devil's in the Details challenge:
- Looking down into a stemmed glass
- Toothpaste tube
- Metallic bubble wrap
- Felt-tipped markers
- Rolling pin
- Coffee beans
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Poetry Friday has arrived again! This Friday, please visit Linda at TeacherDance for some poignant poetry posts.
My son brought this article to my attention. It discusses the hypothetical question of whether Japan would have surrendered in WWII without the US dropping atomic bombs.
The following image from the article struck me.
[US Air Force Photo, September 2, 1945]
It depicts a Japanese delegation onboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. They are there to participate in a formal WWII surrender ceremony. We know how WWII ends from US history books. We may even be able to intuit some of the emotions of the US Servicemen in this picture, but what if we also pause momentarily to consider this scenario from the Japanese point of view? Can we fathom the emotions of that stoic group of men?
I Surrender
I come to you in top hat, gloves, and starched collar.
I come to you with dignitaries, generals, and commanders.
I come to you in solemnity, humility, and defeat.
I will surrender.
I will sign your papers and submit to your photographs, but
I will not share with you my rage, my hopelessness, my pain.
Tracey Kiff-Judson, draft © 2023
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Poetry Friday! Please visit Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone and enjoy all of the Poetry Friday fun!
It’s that time of year!
When I ride my bike through the woods from mid-July through mid-August, I am fortunate to pass through clouds of fragrant perfume from this flowering bush. I think it may be called Summersweet or Sweet Pepperbush (Google Lens identifies it as clethra alnifolia). It smells wonderful, vaguely of Prell shampoo (for those of you who recall Prell from childhood!).
Summer Sweetness
Licorice, pepper,
gardenia and spice.
What is this flower?
It’s not Edelweiss.
Bumblebees drawn in
by scents that entice.
This is the bloom
that’s become my new vice.
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Happy Poetry Friday!
Please visit Tabetha at The Opposite of Indifference for more Poetry Friday goodness and a funny ending.
Last week, I was fortunate to spend a few days with a friend who I haven’t seen in many years. I love that there is always something to talk about with people that you knew growing up. There is so much shared history that you can converse with ease – even if you haven’t seen each other in decades.
Reconnecting
High School Concerns:
making the cut,
whether these jeans look weird,
the Chemistry test.
Today’s Concerns:
our children’s happiness,
whether this mole looks weird,
the Climate test.
Joyful Constants:
your smile crinkles,
shared memories,
the way you say, “This is delightful!”
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
One week ago, I was in my bedroom reading and enjoying the coolness of evening. My husband was working on a computer backup in the next room. I noticed our dog, Bean, barking in the backyard. I didn’t think much of it. She often finds a squirrel very upsetting, lets out a string of dog profanity, and then goes about her business.
This time, her cursing extended into a full-blown tirade. I heard my husband go outside and call her into the house. A few seconds later, the bedroom door opened, and my husband said, “Do you smell anything on Bean?”
I called her over, put my nose on her head, and inhaled deeply. The stench was so overwhelming that I felt woozy.
My husband said, “I think she might have found a skunk,” and pulled the bedroom door shut.
Bean and I stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. We silently agreed that the best short-term solution was for me to ignore the problem. She went over to her dog bed and began the work of licking off the skunk spray. (In retrospect, letting her lick skunk spray was probably a horrible idea!) I resumed reading my book. This arrangement worked for approximately forty-five seconds, which coincidentally, is the exact amount of time it takes skunk smell to permeate every fiber of every fabric in a room.
I bolted out of the room and said, “We have to do something! I don’t have any tomato juice, but I can give her a bath in tomato sauce and canned tomatoes.”
My husband and I blinked at each other, our eyes now watering from the smell.
I said, “Maybe we should ask Google if there is a better solution.”
My husband scanned several articles and announced, “Says: tomato juice doesn’t work. We need hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap.”
Yes! These are items that we always have on hand. I began rummaging through the closet looking for hydrogen peroxide.
Rubbing alcohol – too strong.
Mineral oil – too oily.
Witch Hazel (circa 1995) – why did I buy this?
Not one drop of peroxide.
Sigh. My husband drove off to the 24-hour drugstore in the next town. Bean and I stared at each other again. I gave her a long lecture that went, “No, no, no skunks. Skunks stink. Pee-ew. Now you stink. Pee-ew. No, no, no skunks.” Bean blinked. She licked her leg as if to say, “Look, I’m working on it.”
Thirty minutes later, with the house now smelling like it belonged to a family of skunks (how does the smell MULTIPLY?), we were armed with three small spray-bottles of hydrogen peroxide (‘cause apparently, “That’s all they had.”). I popped off the spray triggers and dumped the peroxide into a bowl with the required amounts of baking soda and dish soap.
I lathered Bean up and let her sit in the mixture for a minute while my husband removed the covering from her dog bed and stuffed it in the washer. After thoroughly rinsing and toweling down Bean, her stench had indeed decreased by, I would estimate, a solid 3%. Sigh.
The three of us gave up and went to bed stinky. The next morning, we were still stinky. One week later ... still stinky.
For this Poetry Friday, a handy recipe and a mini ode:
Skunk Stink Remover
- 1 quart of hydrogen peroxide
- ¼ c baking soda
- 1 t dish soap
Mix ingredients in a bowl. Pour over dog and scrub thoroughly. Rinse. Notice no difference. Wash dog with shampoo. Notice the smell of skunk paired with the smell of shampoo. Wash everything in the house that the dog has even stood near, including bed linens, curtains, and the clothes that you are wearing. Open every window in the house. Wait one week, maybe two. You should notice some improvement.
Mini Ode to a Skunk
I sense your presence all throughout the day.
Your fragrance flits upon the evening air.
I drift to sleep and dream about the way,
You dwell within my clothes, my home, my hair.
To get your Poetry Friday fix, visit Jan Godown Annino's blog BookSeedStudio for Jan's planted words, a dragonfly, and this week’s roundup!
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
I know that I have no right to feel upset because before I was born, I imagine that someone cut down trees to build our house, but today I lament as I listen to a succession of falling trees. I know that I have contributed to the pollution of the air and the contamination of water. The air hangs with smoke from distant wildfires and the global temperature may again soar to a new record high. I worry about the Swomee-Swans, the Brown Bar-ba-loots, and the Humming Fish. Where will they go, now that the air is not clean and the grass is not green?
Buzzzzzz, CRACK, Swish, THUMP
The Man watches from the road in his sunhat with his hands on his hips.
He smiles a satisfied smile.
Buzzzzzz, CRACK, swish, THUMP.
I approach and ask him how many trees he is cutting down.
He grins and says, “Thirty-two and some are pretty big!”
I say, “How sad. They must be very old.”
Buzzzzzz, CRACK, swish, THUMP.
We both stare into the decimated forest with hands on our hips.
As smoke from distant wildfires browns the air,
I wish for the Lorax to pop out of a stump.
Buzzzzzz, CRACK, swish, THUMP.
No Lorax.
Buzzzzzz, CRACK, swish, THUMP.
Please visit Margaret at Reflections on the Teche to see her ruby-red, delicious poem: Ode to Molly's Strawberry Jam and Poetry Friday poems from many friends.
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
Last night at 9:30 PM, a friend texted and urged us to come see the fireflies on a trail near his house. We raced there to view the display. Thousands of tiny lights hovered above the darkened path. It was truly spectacular, like Christmas in July.
I tried to record the show on video, but my camera could only capture the closest lights, not the tunnel of flickering sparks fading to infinity. Maybe you can hear the twanging, bluegrass frog-band that accompanied the visual fireworks?
flashbulbs pop at dusk
scattered specks of light beckon
fireflies seek romance
Haiku and Video © 2023 Tracey Kiff-Judson
For more Poetry Friday fun and this week's roundup, head to Linda Mitchell’s fantastic blog: A Word Edgewise!
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
Thank you to the always-supportive Marcie Flinchum Atkins for hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. Please visit her blog to see her gorgeous nature photos and for more Poetry Friday poems.
Yesterday, I rode my bike earlier in the day than usual. A morning ride beats the afternoon mugginess, but also affords the opportunity to see morning critters. A baby Garter snake slithered off the side of the road when it heard the crunch of my tires. A chubby rabbit bolted across a field of grass. A tiny snapping turtle bit my sneaker when I tried to nudge it to the side of the road.
The day before, I saw three crayfish crossing the road near a stream. Why not stay in the water through the tunnel that goes under the road? Why climb up to the road and risk the vulnerability of crossing on pavement? I wonder.
I also saw these ghostly plants growing along the road. I don’t know what they are, and I couldn’t ask the question in a way that would get Google to tell me. Maybe some kind of fungus? Maybe you know them?
rising from gnarled leaves
surprising among earth tones
ghost of a lily
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
I am excited to join in the Poetry Friday fun! This week’s roundup is hosted by Irene Latham. Please visit Irene’s website https://irenelatham.blogspot.com/ for her roundup of moon poems.
For additional information on Poetry Friday, please see Renee LaTulippe’s post.
Strawberry Moon
Rosy-cheeked
Strawberry Moon,
what cosmic cataclysm
wrought your craters
and left you
seeded and
stunned?
© 2023 Tracey Kiff-Judson
On Saturday, June 3, Connecticut was supposed to see the 2023 Strawberry Moon, but sadly, it was overcast when I when I peeked out at the nighttime sky. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the name “Strawberry Moon” was used by Native American Algonquian tribes to refer to the full moon in June, which is strawberry season in the northeastern US. The Almanac also says that the name does not refer to the color of the moon, but sometimes, when you catch the June full moon just after sunset, it shines like a sun-warmed strawberry.
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
Our last two dogs, Sugar and Bean, were nothing alike in their outward appearance. Sugar was a gorgeous, yellow lab mix who was obedient, loyal, and a fetcher among fetchers. Bean, judging from her appearance and behavior, may be a cross between a cheetah and a giraffe – unlikely combo, I know. She is naughty and fast, and her neck measures nearly half of her body length.
Although they differ in many ways, Sugar and Bean share one unusual characteristic: both pups smile. If you have never seen a dog sporting a “passive grin,” as the vet calls it, it can be alarming. I think it is an unusual trait, but we have been blessed with two smilers. Sugar is no longer with us, but if you meet Bean, be prepared for a wag of her tail and a flash of her pearly whites.
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
While going for a bike ride through the woods of CT yesterday, the air was heavy with the smoke from forest fires in Canada.
“ What? Canada? Isn’t Canada cool, wet, and immune from forest fires of that magnitude ?” you ask.
Apparently not, at least not any more. [See this website from the Canadian government for details on current fire conditions in Canada.]
To complicate matters, as forests are destroyed, those trees are no longer available to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, potentially speeding climate change. [See this article reporting on Boston University research.]
What can the average Josephine do to help slow climate change? This site lists several actions to help reduce our energy consumption, such as:
- Whenever feasible, use mass transit, ride a bike, or drive an electric vehicle for transportation (though there is debate over whether electric vehicles offer the benefit hoped).
- Switch to renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind) whenever possible.
- Ensure that our homes are well-insulated.
- When replacing appliances, select those with high energy efficiency ratings.
- Support local businesses that use sustainable business practices.
- I would add that citizens can speak out and ask their local governments to adopt sustainability initiatives. In CT, an organization, called
Sustainable CT, tracks each town’s voluntary efforts toward becoming a more sustainable community. Other states and cities have similar organizations.
What can the average Josephine do to help slow climate change?
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- Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson
- Category: Blog
When you mention a Highlights retreat, everyone stops to listen. In Boyd’s Mill, PA, a magical place hides in the woods. If you visit, you will discover: acres of trees parted by hiking trails, a bubbling brook, cozy cabins, barns, libraries, locally sourced meals, fellow artists, peace.
In April, 2023, I traveled to this place. Note to travelers: beware of the speed trap in NY, 5.8 miles prior to Boyd’s Mills. Harrumph. I attended a children’s poetry retreat instructed by Irene Latham and Charles Waters. Charles and Irene set the tone for supportive, thoughtful discussions on writing, poetry, and children’s literature.
Being rather shy, I anticipated sitting at a lunch table by myself, listening more than speaking, and quickly retreating to my cabin at night, but this place, these people would have none of that.
My days were filled with lively instruction and discussions, renowned guest speakers, hot meals with a new of group people that felt like old friends, a campfire with banjo playing, thank you, Dean, and nights of sound sleep with extra quilts on my bed.
After the learning, laughter, and admittedly a few tears, I left brimming with purpose. Cautiously driving 29 MPH through Tusten, NY, I made my way home believing that people who write poetry for children are the kindest people in the world, and that Highlights brings out the best in people.