Everyone's a Poet

Gary and I celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary this year with a poetry date at Bear Creek Lake Park. We ate a gourmet picnic lunch, read poetry, and went for a walk on one of the many trails. Listening to the birds and cicadas was heaven.

One of the books I had checked out from the library was Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry: How to Write a Poem, an entertaining book written by our nation's first Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky. Not only did I laugh out loud a few times, I got so tickled I snorted. Perhaps the pigs in the poems had an effect on me.

Mr. Prelutsky has lots of good advice about how to write poetry, even if you're not part of his target audience. Though I've heard it before, it stuck with me this time: Write what you know.

it's still summer

the rain comes

nights are cool, cooler

than the weeks before

the air is chill

with wet

I shiver

anticipating fall and

slipping a sweater

over my head

smelling woodsmoke and

damp leaves