Strange Dreams

Have you ever had a strange dream that made you wish you had a pen and paper to record it?

The mind can be a strange playground!

wandering in the darkness of sleep,

moving silently through unwalked corridors,

holding court with people never met,

engaging in unknown happenings-

The mind can be a strange playground!

bringing waking to a startled moment,

a wrestled, unfinished, lingering thought,

opening daylight with uncharted waters,

that float in the midst of unfinished business.

The mind can be a strange playground!

©CVarsalona, 2017

Thank you to two colleagues who set the stage for this flight of the mind poem that really was lurking in the clutches of a recent dream. Kevin Hodgson's response, "The mind can be a strange playground," to Fran Haley's slice, Song of Invisibility, set my mind thinking. While not remembering all the details of a dream (probably set off by my post, Whoosh), I quickly wrote back to Fran and Kevin.

After my frustrating experience with computer glitches and my vanishing work, I tried to fall asleep. Yoga breathing was one of my remedies but it took a long time to enter dreamland that was filled with all sorts of weird happenings. I wake rested but am trying to remember bits and pieces of what transpired. 

From this crazy experience, a Wonder Bundle Learning Experience on dreams evolved. That ELA lesson plan for 5th grade, using Wonderopolis' Wonder of the Day, #988, Have You Ever Had Crazy Dreams?, is found at the Wonder Ground. 

It is time for this week's Poetry Friday. Buffy Silverman is hosting at Buffy's Blog. 

SPECIAL NOTE: I am collecting poetry for my spring gallery, Springsations, this weekend. Please send in your offering if you have not done so yet. Come celebrate springtime with me.

Touched by Nature

"Seek  the resonance that enters a poem

only when it is touched by the stillness of nature." 

-Margarita Engle

On the days before my daughter's baby shower, I spent time in my gardens with Matt, my landscaper from Rockville Lawn. Our mission was to beautify the exterior of the home. Like in the past, chocolate mulch was added to the beds to provide a beautiful landscape for the plantings that awakened just in time for tomorrow's event at my home. Now, my gardens can have a taste of chocolate along with the rest of my guests to celebrate springtime and the birth of a new addition to our family.

verdant green gardens

filled with nature's bounty-

seasonal decor

showcased in chocolate

festively dressed for spring

spring emissaries

popping up through chocolate

sprouting, standing tall

showcasing seasonal joy-

a springsation to welcome

I always seem to slip into the challenge at the tail end but preparing for the shower has left me little time to unwind and write. These two poems are offered to Michelle H. Barnes' ditty challenge at Today's Little Ditty. My poetry flows from Michelle's interview with Margarita Engle whom I had the privilege of listening to at NCTE 16. Margarita's challenge was to write a tanka, a poetic form that suits me well since I am starting a spring gallery collection of poetic blossoms at #Springsations. 

My ditty challenge is:  Write a tanka poem.  Think of it as a travel diary, even if you are only moving around in your own garden.  You are free to choose any subject.  Your poem is only five lines.  The traditional tanka syllable count is 5-7-5-7-7, but since Japanese syllables are shorter, in English the poem could be awkwardly long. You don’t have to count syllables, but stick to the basic line pattern of short, long, short, long, long.  Keep the total number of syllables for each poem under 30, or even better, keep it under 26.  Less is more.  Shorter is more powerful.  Don’t try to be detailed.  Seek the resonance that enters a poem only when it is touched by the stillness of nature.

I traveled around my garden today from one bed to the next and the images and words are what flowed when my fountain provided the right softness to the night. The stillness of nature is a comfort. 

Friday is the day for Poetry Friends to converse in verse so head over to the Poetry Friday Round-up that can be found at JoAnn Early Macken at Teaching Authors.

The image poems in tanka format above are part of my #poetrylisciouspoetry collection for National Poetry Month 2017.

Please consider creating alongside me for my spring gallery of artistic expressions, Springsations.

Digipoetry is...

I often refer to digital poetry by the coined term, #digipoetry.

Digital poetry is a novel way of artistically blending images, art, and literacy using digital tools to create vivid and appealing poetic compositions. It often bends and turns in the creation process, bringing to life soft murmurings that stir within a writer's heart. Digipoetry often toggles between a nondigital world (writer's notebook) and a digital notebook platform to produce highly visual pieces of techno-artistic poetry. This genre of writing is imaginative in its possibilities and creative in its approach to letting voice fly. 

An element of "play" is seen in today's #poetryliciouspoetry. In the above image, I smashed apps, Tagul and PicMonkey, to create an image poem in vivid hues. I meandered through different scenarios to let the eye design the final combination. In the image below, I digitized a photograph from Easter Sunday at the beach: families gathering, the ocean roaring, and kites flying above the water amidst the swooning seagulls. To recreate that moment, I blended a beach scene photo that I took with a digitally-drawn rendering of a balloon-like kite soaring high above the beach fashioned in Word. A poem emerged while focusing on the photo and was superimposed onto the image. After taking time crafting the digital rendering, a tranquil scene appeared, much like what I saw at the boardwalk. Mission accomplished! I designed a digital creation that was inspired by springtime and added the #imagepoem to my collection of #poetryliciouspoetry. 

Spring at the shore builds summer hopes in the shifting sands for me each time I visit. 

This past week, the watercolored-sky provided the right backdrop for me to capture a spring day at the beach. I added the digital image poem, created using digital techniques and tools, MobileMonet and PicMonkey, that would highlight nature. 

For digital and non-digital poetry treats turn to Tabatha Yeatts' site for the Poetry Friday Round-up.

I would like to invite the Poetry Friday community to create a digital image poem to grace the growing garden at my upcoming spring gallery, Springsations.