PUZZLE PIECES – PROMPT #111

Today, you are given random nudges, the replies to which will become the pieces to your poetic puzzle.

1. Your mother’s first name.
2. A wild  animal.
3. A city you’ve never visited, but would like to.
4. A hobby.
5. A mode of transportation.
6. Your least favorite vegetable.
7. A “lucky” number.
8. Your favorite color.
9. Three random words.
10. Historical event.
11. A childhood friend.
12. The street on which you grew up.

You can write in any form, meter and rhyme scheme.

Your title will be the answer to #1 + the second random word in #9.

MAYBE MARIE:

Patricia’s Summer (a haibun)

Though it was November and quite chilly for the locals, its touch and texture was summer to Patricia as she walked the early morning beaches of Naples.   She strolled leisurely, taking mental note of individual grains of sand as they caressed her toes.  She considered the beached sea kale, noticing minute nuances of emerald tones.  She bent to pick up a particularly lovely shade, when she spotted a baby seahorse — no longer alive, but perfectly formed.  Patricia coddled her in her palm, contemplating whether or not to return her to the gulf of her birth.  Instead, she wrapped her in sea kale, and placed her in her pocket with coquina and golden olive.   She smiled as she recalled lessons learned on Belmont as a child – lessons of the Calusa “Shell Indians.”  Her childhood friend, Summer, loved to learn and speak of early Indian tribes.  She was the one who had introduced Patricia to this little-known tribe.  Now here she was on their beaches, far from her northern roots — farther still in distant time and culture.  Stroking the smooth shells in her pocket, she pondered these resourceful shell seekers, and mourned their extinction. 

 

Returning home, Patricia re-opened a letter from Summer, to which she had not taken time to respond.  She reached for the ornate treasure box Summer had made for her years ago.  In it, she placed her letter, the shells, kale, and seahorse, a dozen grains of beach sand, and her obituary.  She placed the box on a sun-dappled shelf, and marked it “Forever Summer.”      

 

Branch beyond your roots

Be mindful in the present

Gather memories

 

© Copyright Marie Elena Good – 2013

SURELY WALT:

IRENE’S GARDEN

Roller skates without a key
were useless as anyone can see,
And Irene truly knew the score
(though she’s never been to Baltimore)

She planted butt upon the couch
but sat upon her tiger (ouch)
which gave the large cat cause to cry,
and a piece of Irene’s rhubarb pie.

Her friend Susie lived on Wood Street,
her house was Navy Blue
with fourteen pickets in her fence
(you could see right through).

Susie had a veggie garden
that she dug with a spoon,
to make a dish to go with fish,
to eat walking on the moon.

Irene and Susie were in tune,
in fact, they were connecting,
but were caught raiding mail boxes,
(they called it, stamp collecting!)

© Copyright Walter J. Wojtanik – 2013