2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 26 | Collection Poem | WritersDigest.com

Today’s challenge is to write a collection poem. Not everyone collects things, but a glance around our house would tell you that my husband and I do. He does it in a more organized way. My gatherings are distinctly haphazard.

Click on the link to go to Robert Lee Brewer’s blog and read the contributions of others. Then, add your own.

2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 26 | Collection Poem | WritersDigest.com.

Here’s mine:

JPEGs

They fill

the silvery

surfaces of

computer disks,

the hidden

resources

of external

drives, cloud-tops

from long flights,

footprints in snow,

drifting gold

leaves, glinting

sun on summer

lakes, blossoms

in spring orchards,

baby faces,

smiling friends,

all of them

held in virtual

memory, formatted

in universal jpeg.

Like Midas, I run

them through

my fingers,

longing to

hold on.

Linda Armstrong, 11/26/2012. All rights reserved.

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Coot Morning

This morning we walked at Red Rocks Lake near Fruita, Colorado. The golden leaves on cottonwoods by the Colorado are turning brittle and brown. Many have fallen off.

The air is on edge with flocks of birds headed south along the flyway. Some land in the trees. Others rest on the lakes. It is a time of nervousness, excitement, and peril.

For today write about:

• a journey
• a local animal migration
• being a target
• hunting
• a refuge

Near the end of the day instead of its start, here’s mine:

Coots

It doesn’t seem fair

that coots

should be so

sadly designed,

with feet

not as webbed

as more

efficient water birds

and wings so weak

they must

run across

the water

to take off

from the lake.

On winter ice

they wander

among larger

birds like

goslings.

Even their

name is

plain and simple.

though tinged

with shady character.

Where they go

in summer

I do not know,

but every fall

they flock back.

Though less

than fair,

the coots

endure.

copyright Linda J. Armstrong, 10/28/2012; all rights reserved