Snow Days

It doesn't take much here in the deep South to earn us a few snow days. If you've been watching the weather reports from the Atlanta area, you can see what confusion a little bit of ice on the roads can cause. I burrowed in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I snuggled up beside the fire, made hot chocolate, and played with words on a sheet of paper white as the snow outside my window.

Tricia hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Tricia's Monday poetry challenge this week was to write a climbing rhyme, so I tried it, played with it, revised, ditched it, and finally decided to post it.

A climbing rhyme uses internal rhyme in four syllable (or four word) lines. The pattern goes like this:

xxxa

xxax

xaxx

xxxb

xxbx

xbxx

xxxc

xxcx

xcxx 

Here is my effort, along with a photo that shows you just how much snow is required for a snow day.




Snow Day

It's a snow day.
Go away. Please
don't say it's time
for sun to shine.
Don't remind me.
I whine and pout.
Don't make me pack
my book bag to
go back to school.
I want to play
one more day. Please,
snow, stay a while.

Freezing Rain

Tara hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today at A Teaching Life.

I've been working on some poetry this week and wrestling with my tendency to get hung up on the facts and miss the wonder behind some of the adventure stories I am drawing from. I love the way Luci Shaw's poem explores the ideas that poets convey. 

And it's very cold here again, so this one fits the forecast for the day. 

Enjoy!

Freezing Rain by Laslovarga

Freezing Rain

by Luci Shaw


Most of the things a poet has to say
are tentative, lists of foggy clues
and suppositions-an unattested version
of the way the wind breathes at night,
an essay at atmosphere, predictions
as unreliable as weather forecasts. I stab
at the truth with a pencil, sometimes,
moved too suddenly to words by the shadings
on a cloud, or its shape, shivering
at a hint of thunder (sure that it
means something) .

But in the lines set down on paper
all suggestions become categories-
intuition or illusion edited to sound
like logic. Naked ideas turn assertive
in print, sharp, as intricate
as the edges of a woods in winter seen
against a blank sky.

Read the rest here.

Basking in a Little Sunshine!

Sunshine Award!

Thanks to Irene Latham over at Live Your Poem for nominating DoriReads for a Sunshine Award! There is something very special in knowing that you have made someone smile. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, like sunshine on warm day.


These are the rules, but you can change them if you want:

1. Acknowledge the nominating bloggers
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger creates for you
4. List 11 bloggers
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer and let all the bloggers know they've been nominated. (You cannot nominate the blogger who nominated you.)

11 Random Facts:
I love to swim, but never learned to breathe. I do a reasonably good back stroke. I love peanut butter. My daddy called me Doodle. My dad-in-law calls me Charlie. I hate being cold. Not a pet person. Hate to shop. I still love getting old-fashioned letters in the mail. Twitter makes me nervous (must get over that). I love pottery dishware.

11 Questions from Irene:
1. Favorite food to bring to a potluck event?
Cheese and crackers, or something else I don't have to cook.

2. What do you do to relieve stress?
Swim. Pray. Walk. Stretch. Breathe.

3. Favorite quote?
"Surprise me, Lord, as a seed surprises itself..."    George Herbert

4. What is the story behind your name?
My parents were listening to a mystery program on the radio in their car. Apparently one of the characters was called, Doraine. My dad said, "That's going to be my little girl's name." My mother added Pamela before it, but my dad insisted I be called by my middle name.

5. Chore you abhor?
House cleaning. All of it.

6. Cinderella or Snow White?
Snow White, ever since about second grade when there was a story in our reader about Snow White and Rose Red.



7. Do you plan blog posts ahead of time, or real-time posts only?
Some of both. Would love to be more of a plan ahead type blogger, but I keep forgetting to plan ahead.

8. Other social media you enjoy?
I keep up with my scattered children (Texas, Oregon, Nigeria, Mississippi) on Facebook.

9. Introverted or extroverted?
Need you ask? Introverted!

10. Title of the last book you gave as a gift?
I give 2 books to each of my grandchildren on their birthday. (I have 8 now, so that's a lot of books.)  I read them onto my computer (Audacity) and record them on CD to go with the books. The grands are far away (Texas and Nigeria), so they have my voice. Samuel is 3 this week. His books are Little Bit of Winter by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell and Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan. Just got them in the mail today!

11. Happiness is a steaming cup of tea and the company of friend.


Passing the sunshine on to these bloggers:

Violet at Violet Nesdoly/poems

Linda at TeacherDance

Nancy at Blogzone

Janice at The Other Side of the Story

Susan at Writing Memorable Words

Laura at Writing the World for Kids

Mindy at mindy hardwick's blog

Cara at Cara's Blog

Jeannine at Views From a Window Seat

Sarah at her blog

11 Questions:

1. Where do you wish you could go?
2. Favorite quote?
3. Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what kind?

4. Last good movie you saw?

5. Best thing your mother taught you?

6. Favorite book you read in high school?

7. What do you do first thing in the morning?

8. When you're in a crowd, do you find a corner or work the room?

9. Something you like to cook/bake?

10. Beach or mountains?

11. What makes you smile?

Thanks again for the sunshine, Irene.

Happy Poetry Friday

Just want to say thanks to Irene Latham, who nominated my blog for a Sunshine Award. I promise I'll play along. Maybe tomorrow I'll manage to think about those questions!

Our Poetry Friday today is Keri at Keri Recommends. Stop by for lots of poetry-riffic posts.

I'm dipping back into explorers a bit this week, so I thought I'd share a poem from Elizabeth Bradfield's wonderful book, Approaching Ice, published in 2010 by Persea Books. This is one of my favorites.

Why They Went

by Elizabeth Bradfield

  

that men might learn what the world is like at the spot where the sun does not decline in the heavens.
                                                                    —Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Frost bitten. Snow blind. Hungry. Craving

fresh pie and hot toddies, a whole roasted

unflippered thing to carve. Craving a bed

that had, an hour before entering,

been warmed with a stone from the hearth.

Always back to Eden—to the time when we knew

with certainty that something watched and loved us.

That the very air was miraculous and ours.

That all we had to do was show up.

The sun rolled along the horizon. The light never left them.

The air from their warm mouths became diamonds.

And they longed for everything they did not have.

And they came home and longed again.

Read more of Bradfield's poems here.

One Little Word for the Coming Year

I have come slowly back to blogging with the turn of the year. The end of December and the beginning of January are always a time of looking back, re-evaluating, and listening for new direction. I always enjoy my sweet poet friend Irene Latham's One Little Word focus for the year, but I never seem able to settle on just a word. For me, it's generally more a feeling or sense of something in the air that I just cannot cram into a few letters on a page. Although my inner editor admonishes me that I could get that one word if I sat down and demanded more of myself.

Yes, there's an argument going on, the editor correcting, pressing while the more gracious side of me, the one I listen to others with, says be patient with myself.

It feels like it's been winter for a very long time. What I sense is the anticipation of spring, renewal, a new adventure about to begin. Of course, there is no way to know what is around the corner, beyond the bend in the road, and all the other clichés I might think of.

For the moment I am feeling a bit like Pooh Bear.

Winnie the Pooh © Walt Disney

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.”

                                                                          ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

So, perhaps I have settled on one little word after all.

This is a beautiful song called "Anticipation" from the Winter Poem album by Secret Garden.

On a Cold January Morning

By Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel from Holmbury St.Mary, UK (Newlands Corner) 

This Morning of a Snow
by Donal Mahoney


To lie in bed
this morning of a snow
when neither of us
has to go
anywhere for hours

at least. To sprawl
and talk of what
we hope for.
Better, what we know
the years will bring

and contemplate
just knowing

Read the rest here.

It's Poetry Friday and Betsy is hosting the roundup at I Think in Poems.