poems

  • Two years ago, one of the art teachers where I work approached me about getting a group of students together on Fridays during lunch for a bit of creative synergy we affectionately dubbed Figure Drawing and Freewrite Fridays. Students came after lunch (or during, in some cases) and sketched charcoal drawings of student or teacher

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  • Finally! Of all the color poems I’ve written for this series, violet was the most challenging. Admittedly, part of the issue was simply a matter of time. As I’m sure you’ve realized, there never seems to be enough of it! If only Jim Croce could have put time in a bottle… Writer’s block, or that

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  • It’s another one of those life seasons. Little time to be creative as I wrap up another school year. I’m working on my violet poem in any spare moments I can carve out of the day, but I must admit disc golf and time building dams in the creek with my younger boys has been

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  • Blue or Purple? That is the question. When I sat down to write my poem inspired by indigo, I didn’t know where to start. Looking at a rainbow, can you clearly pull out the color indigo like you can red or green? I can’t even go to a Crayola crayon box to find the color

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  • Of all the colors of the rainbow, I fight with blue the most. Ironically, my closet is filled with dress shirts of various shades of blue, and it’s not even my favorite color! (For the record, I do have shirts of other colors, and my favorite color is actually orange.) We associate so many things

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  • Green began when I looked out my back windows and saw the new grass pushing up through the straw we laid down in the late fall after our addition was completed: fresh life sprouting on the new contour of our backyard. I then began meditating on the “evergreen” nature of the color – constant through

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  • Back to the color poems! I began my yellow sonnet meditating on the word itself. What if yellow were a greeting? What if it was a command? Then I considered all the things I associate with yellow such as warning signs, yellow jackets, lemons, old lace, egg yolks, and even the less savory uses of

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  • After the positive response I received for my selection of five haiku in celebration of International Haiku Poetry Day, I figured there might be an audience for my haikunelle. If you search for the form online, you likely won’t find an official definition of the haikunelle, but I imagined the form six years ago as

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  • My wife informed me that today is International Haiku Poetry Day. Believe it or not, I was completely unaware! She heard it from good friends of ours who, chose to celebrate with ice cream. (Yes, we’ll be heading out to the local ice cream parlor ourselves despite the sub-fifty degree weather here after I post!

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  • I hate to waste things. The peanut butter jar is nearly empty? I’ll get the spatula and clean it out. (Makes it easier to wash out before recycling!) Have a few heels of bread? I’ll finish them off for breakfast. Is there a soft spot on that orange? I’ll cut it out and eat the

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