DMC: "sunmotion" by Heidi Mordhorst

sunmotion

little ripples of leafquiver
push dapples across my lap
the more the shiver of sun
the stiller I become
 

© 2020 Heidi Mordhorst (draft). All rights reserved.

TLD reader Margaret Simon has challenged us to write a mindful poem about the present moment. Click HERE for more details and to add your poem to the padlet. While some poems will be shared as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, May 29th.

DMC: "Risk It" by Heidi Mordhorst

RISK IT

You want a band-aid.
What’s it for?
It won’t heal hurts.
It’s something more.

This blister on your
hand’s a scar
from conquering
the monkey bars.

Your knee is skinned,
your ankle’s bleeding--
this happens RIDING,
not while reading.

How’d you get those
itchy scratches?
Berry brambles,
firefly catches.

Elbow, hipbone
bumped and bruised
shows every part of
you got used.

Chafes and gashes,
scrapes and cuts
show you risked it,
had the guts.

You went there,
but you’re not a goner.
This band-aid is your
badge of honor.
 
© 2019 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.


Click HERE to read this month's interview with Karen Boss, Editor at Charlesbridge. Her challenge this month is to write a poem in second person, speaking directly to a kid or kids about something that you think is important for them to know.

Post your poem on our June 2019 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration tomorrow, Friday, June 28th. One lucky participant will win a copy of I Am Someone Else: Poems About Pretending, collected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Chris Hsu, available online for preorder, and coming to a bookstore near you on July 2, 2019.

DMC: "Fear" by Heidi Mordhorst

Fear

I hear about the man, a prisoner, who, starved and beaten and surely afraid,
wrote the names of his fellows in human blood on scraps of cloth sewn
into the collar of a shirt—a shirt that would be worn by whichever of
the company of prisoners was first released, carried out into the
world on his own back.   Witness.   And I ask myself, sitting
here with my cup of tea in my flannel pajamas, comfort
abounding: how dare I fear any loss, any torrent of
grief that I work so hard to keep contained, writ
in the pulse of my overfed blood, sewn into
the muscle of my unmarked neck and
back, worn like a skin.    Listen.
Have I any right to fear?   
I must look at it,
live it, leave
it, let go,

turn
that skin
inside out.

© 2017 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.


Click HERE to read this month's interview with Naomi Shihab Nye. Her DMC challenge is to write a letter to yourself in which you ask some questions that you don't have to answer. (Please keep in mind that your poem does not need to be in standard letter form.)

Post your poem on our September 2018 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up presentation on Friday, September 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her latest collection of poetry from Greenwillow Books:

DMC: "i'm tired of names once you say it you can't take it back" by Heidi Mordhorst

i'm tired of names once you say it you can't take it back

           from "blurred lines" by Lil Fijjii

you (people i love, people who love me) say i'm

bossy, tight, impatient, i try too hard.  i'm tired

is what i am.  i'm tired of

working so hard and tired of those names

people have for us who were born caring.  once

my own grandma called me (age 22) a brat.  you

say that's no big deal.  i say

that's the point:  to me everything is a big deal.  it

is hard to feel like "i care, but not that much."  you

advise me, remind me i can't

care about everything (no one can).  "take

it easy, take it slow," you say, "let it

go."  but the world weighs in and i can't turn my back.

© 2018 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.

Click HERE to read this month's interview with Nikki Grimes. She has challenged us to write a golden shovel poem using a line from one of the poems in the post.

Leave your golden shovel on our March 2018 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, March 30th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of her new companion novel to Bronx Masquerade:

DMC: "Pink Carpet Alphabet" by Heidi Mordhorst

PINK CARPET ALPHABET

After her bath,
cavorting diaperless
(ever the fearsome gymnast)
heroically
she imitates Jiminy:

kangaroo-leaping miles
(nearly over her pillow),
quaquaversal,*
repeating somersaults,
tumbling up valiantly—

wiggle-limbed X
yelling “ZOOM!”

© 2001 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.

* quaquaversal:  outwards in all directions from a common center


Click HERE to read this month's interview with Carole Boston Weatherford. She has challenged us to write an abecedarian poem.

Generally each line (or word) of an abecedarian poem begins with A and continues in alphabetical order until you reach Z. For this challenge, you may start and end with whichever letters you choose, as long as they are sequential.

Post your poem on our September 2017 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, September 29th. One lucky participant will win a copy of Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Eric Velasquez (Candlewick Press, 2017).

DMC: "Ode to an Object" by Heidi Mordhorst

It's taken some effort to keep up with the blog while I've been out of town this week. So for Poetry Friday, enjoy this extra little ditty from Helen Frost's ode poem challenge:


ODE TO AN OBJECT

I see you squatting solidly on the far side of the verb.
You wait patiently for action:  will it be bringing,
singing, ringing?  You might be licked, lifted, lit.
I may pronounce you struck, sipped or sifted.
   Oh—perhaps that is not patience,
   but resignation, even fear?  Object, do not fear.
There’s not much I can do without you.

© 2017 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.


Other featured poems this week were "Ode to Wind" by Linda Baie, "Ode to One Knitting Needle" by Laura Purdie Salas, "Ode to a Tissue" by Donna JT Smith, and "Ode to a Hyacinth Glass" by Diane Mayr. Only one week left to submit your poem in response to Helen Frost's challenge!

Choose an object (a seashell, a hairbrush, a bird nest, a rolling pin). It should not be anything symbolic (such as a doll, a wedding ring, or a flag). Write five lines about the object, using a different sense in each line (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell). Then ask the object a question, listen for its answer, and write the question, the answer, or both.

Click HERE to read her sample poem, "Ode to a River."

Post your poem on our March 2017 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration next Friday, March 31st, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her latest novel-in-poems from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Macmillan:

Join Catherine Flynn for a wonder-filled Poetry Friday roundup at Reading to the Core.

DMC: "refuge & solace" by Heidi Mordhorst

#haikuforhealing 11.26.16

refuge & solace:
today I don't turn on
the news

#haikuforhealing 11.27.16

not by hiding
from the world but by living
widely in it
 
© 2016 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.

Learn more about #haikuforhealing at Mary Lee Hahn's Poetrepository.

Ann Rider has challenged us to write poems about places of refuge and solace this month. Click HERE for more details.

You have until the end of the day to join in! Post your poem on our November 2016 padlet and I will add it to the wrap-up celebration HERE. One lucky participant will win a copy of BEFORE MORNING by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes, courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers.

DMC: "What Does the Knife Know?" by Heidi Mordhorst

WHAT DOES THE KNIFE KNOW?

What does the knife know?
     Red tautness of tomato's skin.
          Garlic's shallot's onion's kin.
     Juicy slick of vitamin.  
          Jolt of pit or stone within.

What does the knife know?
     Tender coarseness of the crumb.
          Whack of steel on boarden drum.
     Whorl and loop don't armor thumb.
          Better bleeding cut than numb.

© 2015 Heidi Mordhorst. All rights reserved.


Joyce Sidman has challenged us to write a "Deeper Wisdom" poem this month. What's a Deeper Wisdom poem, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send your wise words to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, January 30th, and one lucky participant will receive an autographed copy of Joyce's gorgeous new collection of children's poetry: