Monday, May 21, 2012

Flowers from a friend


Do you write poetry? I don’t.
In grade school I would run through the alphabet to figure out how
many words could rhyme with ‘house’. Can you believe ‘wouse’ isn’t a word?
The limerick I agonized over for a college English class was given the cold shoulder by
the professor.
And free form? Hardest of all. Every word needs to count and I never use 13 words when 30 will do.

But when a dear friend sent flowers for my birthday, I wanted to write a poem.
I would do a cinquain.
A cinquain will tolerate no nonsense, no verbosity. It gives you 5 lines, 11 words, a defined structure and several parts of speech and orders you not to mess around with it. So I tried.

By the way parents, this could be a fun summer activity to do with the kids.
Yes Junior, you can go out and play rugby with your pals. But first write a cinquain about it.

Enjoy your Monday. And then tell me about it in a cinquain.

Flowers
lovely colored
flood with fragrance
friendship’s blossoms knockout doldrums
roses

5 comments:

Suef said...

I loved this post! Especially since I wrote a very bad limerick for you for your birthday but you weren't there to receive it! Hope to get it to you soon.

Robin Steinweg said...

Monday
Happy day
Son back home
Life, laughs, plans, hungry
Home!

Robin Steinweg said...

Thanks, Prude, for sharing your birthday roses with us! Your cinquain is beautiful.

Lori Lipsky said...

Dear Prude,

I loved your poem, your photo and the challenge to write a cinquain. I hope the Prude will allow me to respectfully submit an alternate rule for cinquain. Five lines with syllables of 2-4-6-8-2:

Monday
Start the week clean
Create fresh list of goals
Dream large, aim high, but first attack
Laundry

The Prude said...

Oh Lori. Were you looking in my window? This is exactly how my Monday started! Maybe one day I'll tackle this sort of poem.
Robin. What a delightful cinquain. You are bubbling over!