I am continuing to submit ekphrastic one-hour poems to Visual Verse. Here is #3, “When We drove Up to the Lake Home Dad Just Bought”:
https://visualverse.org/submissions/when-we-drove-up-to-the-lake-home-dad-just-bought/
This one is another in a long line of Luanne’s lake poems. Makes sense since I grew up in Michigan on and around various lakes.
Merril Smith and a couple of others poets I know also have lovely poems in the February issue.
Here are some new tags I made for my art journals.
Make it a great week!
Congratulations (again), Luanne. Such an evocative poem with so much below the surface (in a few ways).
Those tags are beautiful!
Below the surface, yes! That’s just one reason why I love to write about the lakes! Thank you so much, Merril. And a big congrats on your VV poem!
You’re welcome. Yes, I can understand why you do.
And thank you!
So compelling
Thank you so much, Joy! xo
Your poem fits so perfectly with the picture, Luanne. I love the tags you made!
Thank you, Angela! Thrilled to see you over here! Congrats on your Visual Verse poem!
Congrats! You are knocking them dead!
Hehe, thanks, Kate! Between Visual Verse and that month of poem writing in December, it’s been a productive time!
I enjoyed reading your poem…so beautifully written. I feel like I was there at the lake. The conclusion of the poem reminds us that children learn to cope with their world…regardless of everything, they build, and dream, and find a way to carry on. Your tags are lovely!!! 🙂
Linda, you are such a master of words. I love what you write here. Yes, they do. And that is such a positive!!! Thank about the tags, too. It is so much fun to splash paint and other supplies all over things hahaha! xo
Luanne, congratulations! A beautiful, evocative and powerful poem – there is darkness in the swamp! The tags are wonderful!
Thank you so much, Annika. The tags are so much fun–creating layers so I can do something mindful for even five minutes at a time. Yes, there is definitely darkness in the swamp!
I enjoyed the poem, Luanne. Congratulations. As a Michigan boy I could relate.
Hahaha, all those swampy lakes around the state! Thanks, John.
😁
Loving your art work! Also your poem at swampy lake’s edge. I would have been scared too — but you wove all that teeming murk into beauty.
Thank you, WJ! Yeah, it was pretty creepy. Eventually we got it cleaned up somewhat so we could have a dock and a clean floor for swimming. But we still had to cross the swamp to get to the lake. Not a lot of fun on the Sunfish or water skis. The feeling of the slimy weeds around my ankles in those skis . . . .
Mud puddles that most kids would have killed for! And you didn’t like the swampy stuff? Great verse.
My brother and his friends loved the swamp. They caught bullfrogs for restaurants to make money. But it was nasty. SLIMY and hidden wildlife that may or may not be creepy, but definitely scare you when you suddenly feel something moving at your feet!
Well … when you put it that way….
Haha. Admit it: now you’re creeped out, right?
Okay, yup! I never liked even dangling my feet in the water if I couldn’t see into it. (And I don’t let my hands dangle off the bed at night either).
Hah, same!
What an evocative poem, Luanne. I could really see you in the scene as a child, coping with whatever you had to. It fit well with the image, too.
Congratulations on publication of another memorable poem
Luanne, if you ever grow disenchanted with your awesome poetry, your art work is on the road to marketability!
The tags are really very cool.
Hehe. Thank you! I am having fun working with my hands–more hands, less mind than writing.
Love the poem! That alliteration of silent snakes slithering—wonderful. And I assume from the last line that you did eventually grow to love the place, muck and all.
Thank you so much, Amy! Haha, I do have a lot of nostalgia for those days!
Love your poem, Luanne! It remains me of the old canal that ran through my hometown. It wasn’t water you would ever swim in, and even when it iced over, I worried about snakes being just below the surface 😉
Oh, I also LOVE those tags! Quite the artist, you are 🙂
This poem sent a shiver through me, so much darkness lurking beneath the surface literally and metaphorically. I was relieved to read the last two lines.
I enjoyed that lake poem. I grew up on the edge of a swamp, and spent many hours there.