Tweetspeak Poetry

Thank You Notes: Evergreens

By 19 Comments

evergreen-poems-thank-you
Thank You Notes is a monthly prompt that focuses on expressing our thanks to a particular person, place, or thing—in poems, paragraphs, or pictures. This month, we’re crafting thank-you’s to evergreens.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives. If you are crafting a pictorial thanks, show us something unusual or intriguing that we might not have otherwise noticed if we hadn’t seen your picture.

2. Consider fitting the form of your poem, paragraph, or picture to mirror the nature of the person, place, or thing to which you are expressing thanks. A sonnet is different from a villanelle, for instance. Maybe one would be more fitting than the other.

3. Consider playing Taboo and try writing without using the words and phrases thanks, thank you, gratitude, or grateful.

4. Consider doing a little research about your subject: its history, associated words (and their etymologies), music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details.

That’s it! We look forward to your creative thank you notes.

Photo by Robin, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

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Comments

  1. nancy marie davis says

    oh
    your needles poke
    and hold spider’s webs
    in green
    winter death
    to
    trinket memories
    and sheltered gifts

    Reply

  2. Laura Lynn Brown says

    Dear pine bough that broke off from the weight of an ice shirt and a snow coat and pierced my car’s windshield in a neighboring parking lot on the Christmas morning I was supposed to fly home,

    Because you did that and I couldn’t drive, I was stranded at home instead of trying to make the treacherous drive to the airport, where I would have had to turn around because departing flights were canceled that day.

    You afforded me a good workout from breaking your smaller branches off and eventually removing you from the car.

    You allowed me to work out some frustrations by flinging your little branches and cones at the very tree that let you go.

    If not for you, I wouldn’t have gotten to use my MacGyver skills to tape a tarp-like blue IKEA bag over the car’s wound.

    Thanks to you, I learned that car windshield replacement companies will send someone right to the disabled car (or, in my case, on a day of freezing rain, to come within a quarter mile, to the protective covering of a self-serve car wash, if I am able to drive there).

    You provided freshly harvested aromatic greens, for free, to decorate my front door.

    Because you and the weather kept me from going home at all that week, I could use the airline voucher two weeks later to go home for Dad’s first chemo treatment for the cancer we didn’t even know he had until January.

    And because you fell, the next time I couldn’t drive up my hill and had to park down below, I could park in that very same spot, now with nothing but sky overhead, knowing that at least THAT wouldn’t happen again.

    Thank you, pine bough, for being the evergreenest item in the the winter section of my “Can Laugh About It Now” file.

    Warmly,
    Laura

    Reply

    • Bethany says

      Love this, Laura. I can see you doing your darndest to “tape a tarp-like blue IKEA bag over the car’s wound.”

      And “evergreenest” is such a fun adjective.

      Reply

    • Will Willingham says

      Something else might happen, but “at least THAT won’t happen again.” That made me laugh. (As did the image of the tree flinging its cones, because I misread that part.)

      Reminds me a little of Szymborska’s “Could Have.”

      Reply

  3. Joanne says

    For the way you smell
    Vaguely of cinnamon
    After the rain

    For your green in winter
    When everything else
    Is grim and gray

    For sheltering all manner
    Of wild things — holding
    Them close in your vast arms

    For the way ou rise,
    Majestic, against blue sky
    And the light of the moon

    for enduring, in spite
    Of fire, storm,
    And the indignities we’ve thrust on you

    For all these gifts
    There are no words, except —
    Stay…

    Reply

  4. Sharon A GIbbs says

    This is my maiden voyage as contributor of words at TSP. My newfound love for poetry wouldn’t allow me to keep still any longer. So I put this morning’s gratitude into poetry.

    Winter wears arctic whites.
    Her feet appear powdered—
    patchy with confectioner’s sugar.
    Winter dons evergreens,
    her long coats of conifers
    buttoned in blankets of needles.
    Winter’s austerity is embroidered with
    the crimson of four cardinals—
    who forage for feed in nature’s canteen.
    Winter astounds me with sustenance
    despite the sparseness.

    Reply

    • Sharon A Gibbs says

      I love it! Left a comment at your place.

      Many talented and gifted poets open my eyes to the way words come alive and help us feel. Hearts placed on the page. You surely did that.

      Thank you for sharing.

      Reply

    • Bethany says

      Such a charming photograph, Michelle! Love this:

      “making space for dark winter mornings

      and the glow of this new evergreen.”

      Reply

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