Tag: free verse poem

The Almost Beginning

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Anastasia (I love that name!) at Small Poems. Thank you for hosting! Anastasia looks back on her acceptance letter of her work and shares a poem.

I’m thinking about holiday gifts and I’m trying to make some of them. But as most sewers, crafts people, cooks, knitters, painters and all other artists know, disappointment can often tag along on one’s creative endeavors. Today, after not embroidering for a long time, I decided to try to embroider a flower. I was thinking of embellishing a bookmark. I found a picture of an embroidered flower that I thought was pretty and used it as a guide but thought mostly I’d wing it.

To me, the effort was just OK. A little sorry. Not horrible, but not exactly the flower or plant I was inspired by. After two hours of work, I felt like I’d wasted most of my morning. But isn’t that the way it goes?

I will try embroidery again soon, but since it’s Thursday and time for Poetry Friday, perhaps a poem about my experience might redeem my lost time, though, of course it just might add to it.

The fact is, and we all know it, especially you teachers out there, the sense of failure and disappointment is part of the learning and creative process. We all feel it and unless we accept it, we will never succeed at anything.

Below is my poem, another draft, another beginning. 

THE ALMOST BEGINNING

Did you ever
try something
and fail?

Like write a poem?
Bake a cake?
Draw a flower?

And felt
the words weren’t right
The cake didn’t rise enough
and you created a spider
instead of a flower?

             Congratulations! 

You have arrived at
the Almost Beginning 
         of whatever you attempted.

That dull disappointment
in your stomach?
It will linger only if
you give up.

So next, 
think about 
what was wrong

        with the words
        with the ingredients or oven
        with your crooked stitches,

and try again,
certain you can get there,
because maybe  
      days ago
      years ago 
you have been here, 
at the Almost Beginning, before.  
 

© Janice Scully 2023

Enjoy the holiday season!

Fits and Starts of Spring

It’s Poetry Friday! Thank you Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone for hosting. Stop by and when you do, check out her photographs of birds and much more on her previous post as well. They are quite beautiful.

I have two poems to share today, but just as I was searching for another poet’s work to spice up my post I received this card from a second grade student named Andrew from the Poetry Project in Happy Valley, Oregon. It made my day that had included a brief local power outage while I was about to put bread in my electric oven. Anyway, all that resolved and I can’t wait to share Andrew’s poem! Was it a coincidence that my husband and I had pizza for dinner?

Spring is coming to Syracuse, N.Y. in fits and starts. My forsythias this morning were blanketed overnight:

Change of course is the only thing we can depend on. It comes no matter what, and is determined as a main character, in a middle grade novel. Strong and persistent.

In many things, there is no clean break with what came before. Think seasons, kids growing up and adults aging. Change reveals our humble place on the planet, our part in something bigger.

The seasons here in Syracuse change like the flow of cold molasses. Seasons moves forward as if ambivalent. Spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and winter to spring takes weeks, even months.

So, with all the time I now suddenly have on my hands, I’ve been watching closely out my window and on long walks, spring approaching with its fits and starts, stepping forward and then backward. Below is a tanka and a short free verse poem inspired by this week’s weather.

SPRING CAUTION 

Trees wear snow today,
coating limbs way past elbows,
halting the lilacs.
I suspect spring was frightened
by yesterday's hyacinths. 

© Janice Scully 2020

And another inspired by a sideways windy day this week:

WINDY TUESDAY

The wind ebbed
and flowed through the trees
like a witch
with lips pursed blowing,
cheeks big as balloons
starting and stopping,
unsure if she 
wanted company or
to scare everyone away.

© Janice Scully 2020

I hope everyone is enjoying the amazing progressive poem organized by Margaret Simon at Reflections of the Teche. It’s been really interesting to see the choices the poets are making. Thank you, Molly, for hosting Poetry Friday this week!