This prompt asks for a poem where all lines begin with a country’s name. I admit this is not my favourite prompt nor poem:

Canada

Canada dresses in PJ bottoms to trek to the drive-thru at Timmy’s,
Canada orders a double-double dark roast, and a doughnut.
Canada gives me long stretches of grey pavement to drive beside
Canada’s old-growth forests burnt black and leafless in swampy ground.
Canada’s namesake goose lays down goose poop to carpet the riverbank.
Canada is not all igloos and snow.
Canada has a penchant for maple syrup, for some of us there’s poutine.
Canada has thousands of lakes, and thousands of miles of wilderness.
Canada shivers in winter, swelters in summer, bathes in brilliant
Canadian fall colours: red maples and orange, yellow birches which
Canada counterpoints with its deep emerald evergreens
Canada in spring blooms forth from the snow in crocuses and forsythia
Canada blossoms with apples, pears and peaches for pies.
Canada has science, medicine, astronauts, poets, and musicians.
Canada has it good because
Canada has Drake, Shawn Mendez, Ryan Gosling and Captain Kirk, AND
Canada has no Donald Trump.

Carol A. Stephen
April 14, 2018

This prompt was to write a 4 stanza poem, each beginning with the phrase “Each day I choose”, which can be removed or not during revision. Here is my quick attempt:

Each day I choose

to mute the alarm, to snooze
five minutes more and then another
five, before I sit up and frown.
Another day I’ve slept too long.

to ignore the white page staring
back accusing me from the one-eyed
screen, the empty space where words
of poems were always meant to be.

Each day I choose procrastination
and delay, plan to write another day, and yet
each day is the same as the one before.
I rise intent and then ignore.

I tell myself I’ll do better tomorrow.
But tomorrow is just another version of today.

Carol A. Stephen
April 13, 2018

The prompt for April 12th is about seashells, used in surprising ways.

Here is my attempt:

The Front Door is for Angels

I heard again the small sound of her knocking.
When I opened the front door, a tiny girl
stood there, ginger hair wild above her
keen blue eyes, an angel of an urchin.

Her dress was the colour
of faded sky. On her feet,
seashell sandals sparkled
like bright sand in the sun.

One small hand dipped into
a pocket. Flat-palmed, she
offered me pink and yellow pieces
of salt-water taffy.

My mother makes them, she told me.
Won’t you try? Please say that you will buy!

Her eyes dropped as she looked away.
I strained to hear her say,
I need new shoes.

Carol A. Stephen
April 20, 2018

The prompt was to write about a favourite childhood toy, and to end each line in “ing”.

Elephant, Singing

My favourite cuddle toy was not the usual thing,
when I was small,  I held close an elephant that could sing

He only knew a simple tune, a lullaby to wing
me off to sleep and every night he sang his offering
his gentle  notes of sleepytime, his music sending
me to the land of Nod, the land of childhood dreaming.

My elephant came at Christmas in December 19something
his fur was white, his ears were red, a ribbon tying
round his neck. One day when Mum was washing
sweaters, my elephant tumbled in, red running

through the wash colouring everything.
From then on he was pink, and I?  Explaining
why a child so small  knew pink elephants, not the usual thing.
He’s gone now, I don’t know where, but I’m still remembering.

Carol A. Stephen
April 9, 2018