For Christmas, my brother gave each of his surviving siblings a mug with a QR code on it. My QR code leads me to a trivia question each day. My sister gets the bird of the day. Another brother learns a little history from his. The gift-giving brother learns about an unusual creature each day. The other day his creature was a Sea-Pig:

Scotoplanes globosa, commonly known as the sea pig, is a species of sea cucumber that lives in the deep sea. It is considered a detritivore, or something that eats detritus, decaying organic matter. These kinds of creatures are crucial to the ecosystem, but we seldom consider them.

Out of sight, out of mind.

They probably like it that way.

I know that I do

Oh, to pocket time
It flies one season to next
Simply catch a star

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This is my response to this week’s W³ challenge which is to create a haiga by pairing a haiku (traditionally about nature) or senryu (traditionally about human foibles) with a visual art form of my choice. The theme: the long-awaited shift from winter to spring.

I think this is a senryu? It is a human foible to think we can control time, right?

The artwork is a little self-indulgent. It’s a collage I made at Christmas. I also made a few ornaments along the same theme, but never did anything with them.

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This week’s W³ challenge is to write a Memento — a poetic form created by Emily Romano. A memento poem captures a holiday, anniversary, or meaningful moment held in memory.

The poem is written in two stanzas. Each of the two stanzas follows this syllabic pattern:

• Line 1: 8 beats
• Line 2: 6 beats
• Line 3: 2 beats

This pattern is repeated once per stanza, for a total rhyme scheme of a / b / c / a / b / c in each stanza.

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True story: I wrote a Memento poem about what I thought was the first poem that I ever wrote. My mother had saved the paper witten in my blocky large first grade printing. She told me that it was the first poem I wrote. I always thought it was a pretty darn good poem for a six year old.

Then I fact-checked my mother this morning. I did NOT compose that poem. Oh, I wrote it on a piece of paper and got a gold star from my teacher, but it was not my original words. [sad face]

So, I tried to remember when my love affair with poetry began.

It was probably One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. He still influences my writing.

But Carl Sandburg’s poem Fog is the first stand-alone, non-nursery rhyme, non-Dr. Seuss poem that I remember loving.

I memorized The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes a few years later. That was the beginning of my love affair with story poems. We had a book of story poems that included Casey at the Bat and The Cremation of Sam McGee, but I loved the melodrama of The Highwayman.

I found that story-poem book in a box recently. It was in sad shape. Such is the fate of much-loved books.

So what was the first poem I ever wrote? I have no idea.

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.”