Crayfish, Crows, and Comics

I always enjoy the poetry challenges that David Harrison posts on his website, and this week’s was no exception.   David offered a word list with “cr” sounds, and asked participants to use as many as possible in a poem, with the target age of K-2.  Here’s a slightly revised version of my poem (with two fewer “cr” words than the original, in exchange for a crunch/lunch rhyme.)

Photo by Harald Miller, from Flickr
Photo by Harald Miller, from Flickr

Crawdad Creek

Crowd of crawdads crawls in creek,
waving claws that pinch and crunch,
bashing, crashing as they creep;
flock of crows crowds at creek,
feathered crooners caw for lunch–
craving crawdads, fill their beaks.

 

 

I also enjoy participating in Laura Purdie Salas’ 15-word or less challenge.  The identity of this week’s photo is a mystery to me.  Are those Easter eggs hung up on a cork board?  Exercise balls lined up in front of a mirror?  Colored lights above a bathroom sink?  A hoarder’s collection of empty L’Eggs containers?

The only colored eggs I had in my Easter-less childhood were silly putty eggs.  Remember the smell of silly putty?   That scent instantly transports me to the “den” in my childhood home, where I’m hunched over the Springfield Republican, making mirror images of ads and colored comic strips.  Here’s a slightly-more-than-15-word version of the poem that this memory sparked:

Silly Putty on Sunday Morning

Knead, pressSilly-Putty_2
lift, peel
s  t  r  e  t  c  h—
Dick Tracy’s smoothed
, soothed
with sagging jaw;
crush, roll, pat again:
Snoopy droops,
forever cursing
Red Baron.

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Hop over to Think Kid, Think! where Ed DeCaria is hosting Poetry Friday to read today’s roundup AND serving up the definitive history of Poetry Friday!

 

 

18 thoughts on “Crayfish, Crows, and Comics

  1. I love Dick Tracy’s sagging jaw. And in the first poem I like the relationship between the crowd of crawdads and the crowd of crows. Hmm…I think I want to write a poem heavy on the alliteration.

    1. Thanks for reading and commenting Liz. Yes, go write some alliteration poems! I’m planning on using a word book (grouped by grade level–can’t recall the title) to inspire some more.

  2. It was a sad day when they changed the newsprint ink and Silly Putty no longer worked the same on the Sunday paper. Sigh. What does it work on now? I just know that you can’t get newsprint on your forearms as you lie on the floor to read the comics any more. Of course, if I made the mistake of lying on the floor to read comics now I’d be there until I could crawl to the wall or a piece of furniture to help me up again. Sigh.

    1. I did not know (or more likely did not remember) about this devastating newsprint news. I think silly putty still worked on comics when my kids were younger.
      Oh I know what you mean about getting up from the floor! I now depend on the laundry basket to help me up after loading the machines. But yoga helps!

  3. I, too, remember those silly putty days. I always regretted lifting the newsprint onto a pristine blob. The silly putty seemed ruined from that point on. Actually, it never really mattered if I used the putty to lift comics, it didn’t take long before the blob was covered in dog fur. Talk about ruination!

    1. Oh I recall that feeling too–but I could not resist plastering it down on the comics. I remember rolling silly putty on typing paper to try to clean it off. Don’t recall if it worked.

  4. These are great! I especially like the last three lines of Silly Putty: “Snoopy droops…” I remember those days fondly!

  5. Hi, Buffy. Your crawdad poem is a great way to teach alliteration.

    It’s the Silly Putty that caught my attention, though! My mother used to include a Silly Putty egg in our Easter Baskets. My brothers and I loved taking imprints of the Sunday cartoons and stretching Dagwood’s head out of proportion.

  6. Fun poems, Buffy. Thanks for the silly putty memories (yes, the smell!).

    The crawdad poem is quite a mouthful — I shall have to recite it for the flock of crows who’ve taken over our back yard.

    1. Thanks for stopping by, Jama. Yes the memory of that smell can take you back. My kids had silly putty when they were younger, but I don’t think it was ever as big a thing for them. I guess making an image was a whole lot less miraculous for kids in the nineties.

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