Poetry Friday - Today With the Poetry Pals!

     It's Poetry Friday, and Denise Krebs is hosting HERE at her blog, Dare to Care.   She wrote last week that she's planning to join the Poetry Pals' end-of-month challenge, too. And, she has, showing us both the gratitude for rain in a drought-laden landscape and a raucous shout for LIBERTY! 

          Here's what they wrote: 

"Here’s the scoop: We’re taking advantage of the rich bounty of the Poetry Friday Universe and writing ____is A Word Poems, wordplay invented by poet Nikki Grimes and shared by Michelle Barnes. Here’s the roundup from our first foray in October 2021, which was a lot of fun. Our words will be ‘in conversation’ somehow."

 Thanks for hosting, Denise! 

  

          I imagine one may think it's trite to say I love the challenges words offer. I do crosswords and other puzzles, get my daily word from Wordsmith, and consistently wonder how anyone learning English can do it without pounding the walls while studying. Many words don't seem to follow consistent spelling rules, those homophones, like they're, their, and there. And, they constantly challenge with varied pronunciations, like "We live in a city." or "We're going to a  live concert." Those are called heteronyms. 

        For a mysterious reason, a word with two disparate meanings popped into my head, another challenge for those learning English. I found numerous ones, all termed homographs, but stuck with this one!  What a lot of fun to really concentrate on Nikki's, and the Poetry Sisters' challenge, a departure from our world today, at least for a while! Thanks all!

 

When A Word Clashes

 

Two words woke me last night, 

No single voice, though they own the same letters.

 

Stalk can be an action word,

creeping in, flaming with skullduggery.

“I’ll snatch a part of your life, following your path.

I’ll stalk a few steps behind; watch out!”

 

Stalk can be a farmer’s word,

with gentler tone, whispering, 

“Return to the corn with your grandfather,

Walk along as you both touch the leaves,

Feel the burst of life protected by this stalk.”

The tassel tickles my fingers,

and my grandfather picks me up to reach

the tiptop of the spire. He’s proud to show me

how good his stalks are growing, how good it will be

to slather their fruit with butter and bite in. 

 

Linda Baie ©