But —
But what?
But you’re wrong
Yeah? And I’m King Kong
That doesn’t make you right
You wanna fight?
Ok, tell me how you figure
That minus five is bigger
Than minus two
That’s easy to do!
You think you’re smarter ‘cuz you’re older
But minus five is clearly colder

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This is my response to this week’s W³ challenge:

“Write a poem (up to 20 lines) as a conversation, text thread, or inner dialogue. Let the two voices go back and forth — negotiating, hesitating, contradicting — but never quite landing on a plan. Play with repetition and everyday details to build tension and show who these people are. Slip in small observations that make the moment feel real. And when you get to the end… leave it unresolved.”

“I know it’s in here somewhere,”
She said as she dug through her pocket
She pulled out some coins, some random keys
A gold chain and her grandmother’s locket

She set in the dish a wadded up tissue
A hair clip, a Swiss army knife
“I know I didn’t forget it,” she said
As she pulled out a drum and a fife

“Could I offer you this?” she said to the man
As she pulled out a cup of iced tea
The TSA agent sighed a big sigh–
“Ma-am, I just need your Real ID”

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This week’s W3 Challenge:

Let’s send 2025 off with a giggle!

Write a poem of 10 lines or fewer that places someone—or something—in a delightfully improbable location. Think sharks in a bathtub, a dragon in a bar, or any unexpected presence where it clearly doesn’t belong.

---

I know, I know — it’s 12 lines, not 10 — but I was on a roll.

The world is too much with me. Go away!
Ah — to be untethered from my phone
Walk in the woods and hear trees creak and groan
Or on the beach to feel the ocean’s spray

Instead I’m at its beck and call all day
Unless, of course, I chance upon a zone
That’s “dead” — and then (what pity!) I am thrown
To MY devices! Yes — for this I pray!

Perhaps I should “forget” my phone at home
When I go off upon my next vacation
I might find time to sit and read a tome
Goodness! This is such a real temptation!
Maybe I could even write a poem
Tempting. Oh-so-tempting — that cessation

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I am humbled to say that my poem, Monongahela, led to me being chosen as Poet of the Week for the W³ Challenge. That meant that I got to choose the challenge for this week.

First, I was stunned to be chosen. And grateful.

Second, I was faced with The Challenge challenge.

Recently, I woke up one night with the words of a Wordsworth poem running through my head. As I told David, the keeper of the site that hosts the W3 challenge, it’s not totally unusual for me to wake with a poem in my head, but it’s almost always e.e. cummings who haunts my dreams. Strange, but true.

Anyway, I said to David, “Let’s use the Wordsworth sonnet as inspiration.” And that’s what the challenge turned out to be. He wrote:

William Wordsworth wrote “The world is too much with us,” and honestly… same. The holidays tend to sharpen that sense of disillusionment with materialism.

Below is Wordsworth’s sonnet. Choose one phrase from it and steal it—boldly and poetically. Weave the phrase into your own poem in any way you like; it should be recognizable, but the poem should be yours.

Your poem doesn’t need to be a sonnet, but in a nod to the form, limit yourself to 14 lines or fewer.

‘The World Is Too Much With Us’ by Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Home built into hillside
Limited where she could go
The little girl stood on the deck
And watched the water flow

“She doesn’t talk!” her mother wailed
And true, she spoke not a word
But watched the river morn ’til dusk
Adults found this absurd –

“Can you say Dada,” her father said
Hoping to break through
“How ’bout Nana,” Grandma said
But she ignored that too

The water flowed. It churned and toiled,
Dirty brown below her
One year passed, then two, then three
Still mute – no one could know her

Then one day, as the river flowed..
Her mother said, “I feel a –“
But her daughter interrupted her
And said, “Monongahela.”

Her mother stopped. Her mother stared.
“What did you say, dear daughter?”
“Monongahela,” said the girl.
“That’s the name of the water.”

From that time on she talked and talked
’bout turtles, carp and bass
And muddy water, boats, and birds
That she had watched go past

Monongahela — what a name
She said it o’er and o’er
The water she had watched so long
That flowed below her door.

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Violet (the Poet of the Week for the W³ challenge) said, “Choose one of these three artworks and let it take you wherever it wants. Write whatever it stirs in you — a memory, a question, a scene, a poem.” She had three pieces posted, but I chose Pittsburgh People – (1942) by Reynold Weidenaar.

My sister used to live in Pittsburgh. I remember going to visit her and taking my kids to ride the incline, a cable-car-train thing that had originally been used to transport workers up and down the steep slope.

Pittsburgh also has three rivers — the Allegheny and Monongahela converge to form the Ohio. They were there at the bottom.

Monongahela is just a fun word to say, though. And Violet said, “… whatever stirs in you.” Monongahela.