Select Page

Slice of Life March Challenge. No. 24.
Poetry Friday : March 24, 2017.
Five Minute Friday : March 24, 2017.

I read Lynne’s Song of Sunshine inspired by Langston Hughes’ April Rain Song, and I was inspired to try to follow the model to write a poem (#PoetryFriday) with the noun embrace (#FiveMinuteFriday).

Your Embrace

Let your embrace speak hope into despair
Let your embrace kindle warmth where love is cold
Let your embrace comfort mourning hearts
Your embrace gives strength to the weak
Your embrace spreads freedom and peace
Your embrace makes joy overflow
I cling to your embrace

© 2017 Alice Nine

Then I decided to try a few lines with embrace as a verb.

Embraced

You embraced me with your smile
You embraced me with your eyes
You embraced me with your words
and I embrace you in my arms.

© 2017 Alice Nine


Five Minute Friday offered the word embrace as a quick write prompt. For five minutes I wrote a quick write, a free write, a stream of consciousness. Here it is in all its roughness, in pen and paper — tools I prefer for a free write.

I mention Embrace by Billy Collins in my quick write. Here it is.

Embrace

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
her hands grasping your shirt
her fingernails teasing your neck
from the front it is another story
you never looked so alone
your crossed elbows and screwy grin
you could be waiting for a tailor
to fit you with a straight jacket
one that would hold you really tight.

-Billy Collins


Writing about my writing

Titles of my poems.
Did you notice that one title uses embrace as a noun and the other uses it as a verb?

Observations of my free write.
I notice when the intensity of my thinking increases I have slips in spelling, I begin listing. Also, I began with positive ideas, then suggest the negative, and finally ended with consideration of the motive behind an embrace … and that would be another topic to free write.


poetry-friday-logo

Catherine at Reading to the Core is hosting
the Poetry Friday Roundup today.
Join us there!  Thank you, Catherine!

Poetry Friday Schedule: 2017 January – June.
Poetry Friday Guidelines
More about Poetry Friday

**********

Thank you Kate Motaung for hosting.

Read more about Five Minute Friday

**********

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting
2017 Slice of Life Story Challenge