Spine Poems. Day 144.

I had nothing today, no ideas, no revisions, no poetry. I didn’t even want to share a recipe. I needed help with my fleeing focus.

Sometimes when I’m struggling to write, I google “writing prompts.” Dr. Filas used to pass an item like a pear around the classroom and tell us to write about it for five minutes. The end of our little essays was never about a piece of fruit.

The online ideas are limitless and today I found a new one, spine poetry.

When I lived in Massachusetts, I had quite the book collection. In a frantic attempt to become more minimalistic, I whittled down the group, and now have a sweet little family of only the books that mean something to me. I also have some children’s books packed away for the future, whatever I mean by that.

I walked to my bookshelf and peeked at the books I had, gauging the difficulty of using the ones I had to write spine poetry with. Surprisingly, it’s quite difficult especially when your children’s books are packed away, because their titles are more simplistic. I gave it a whirl and now am hooked. (I will add punctuation to the poem to display how I read it.)

Try it yourself. Start with a couple books and see what you can come up with. It works the mind as a crossword puzzle would, or even solitaire. I will forever do this when I look at them. I am doomed!

Nature Poem.

Wicked
bleak house,
in the woods,
a mercy . . .
The giving tree.

Out of the shadows,
where the crawdads sing,
the grass is singing.

‘Tis, the best we could do.

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