Sweet Little Kitty

Photo by Mary Lee Hahn

Sweet Little Kitty

Cat curls up tight,

closes eyes, purrs.

Disguised by sleep,

sinks down deep where

cat dreams are found

and stalks, soundless,

huge now, lethal.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

This is the poem I wrote for this week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect. The form is called "Climbing Rhyme." Each line can either have four words or four syllables. I went for syllables. The rhyme is internal. For more details, read this post. Here's a nice visual Tricia gave us to track the rhymes:

xxxa

xxax

xaxb

xxbx

xbxc

xxcx

xcxx

Indoor Recess

Indoor Recess

Too cold again.
Too snowy for outdoor recess.
Too many days spent with the same twenty classmates.
Too limited without electronics.

We already built with blocks.
We already played board games.
We already made up a storytelling game.
We already finished four jigsaw puzzles.

Let's play all together!
Let's play a whole class game!
Let's play Heads Up Seven Up!
Let's play!

***

It's amazing to see them ALL play together.
It's amazing -- first time in my career it's happened.
It's amazing to know that collaboration can emerge so naturally.
It's amazing to have faith and hope reaffirmed during indoor recess.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

The Poetry Stretch at Tricia's blog was a new form to me -- anaphora, "the repetition of the same word or phrase in several successive clauses." There are some spectacular examples in the comments. Mine describes what happened at recess this week.

Yin and Yang

YIN AND YANG

I crave both
the comfort of routine
and the thrill
of unknowns.

The comfort of routine:
the well-worn path through a day full
of unknowns,
surprises at every turn.

The well-worn path through a day, full.
And the thrill --
surprises at every turn.
I crave both.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Recipe

Recipe
The yellowed newspaper clipping
is attached to an index card
with brittle cellophane tape.
"Nov. 1949
Women's Day Kitchen"
is written in faded ink
at the top of the card.

Her canned tomatoes
were from the garden,
mine are from the store.
Her biscuits were made from scratch,
mine are a boxed mix.

She washed up the prep bowls
by hand,
tired after a long day's work.

Some things don't change.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014