Poets United Midweek Motif ~ not-so-old-fashioned “Hobbies”

Greetings! and welcome to Poets United Midweek Motif. Susan took a wee break, so I’m filling in today. She sends you her love and promises to be back (to tempt our muses) on the first week of August.

Today’s prompt, not-so-old-fashioned “Hobbies”, was inspired by my reaction to a pamphlet (from an organization that shan’t be named). The document in question calls gardening, baking, sewing, dancing and poetry writing “old-fashioned hobbies”. After I was done being outraged (gardening and poetry writing aren’t hobbies, thanks very much!), I thought that it might be nice to write poems about hobbies or life-giving activities, which some might consider old-fashioned *cough*. 

So, dear poets, I invite you to write a new poem using not-so-old-fashioned hobbies, such as gardening or baking or sewing or dancing or candle making or poetry writing… or, well, pretty much any activity you do regularly (which brings you pleasure) as a foundation.

 

Three glimpses from poems around the web:

from “The Song of the Shirt”, by Thomas Hood (this version appears at the beginning of The Poison Thread: A Novel, by Laura Purcell).

Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!

Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives!

It is not the linen you’re wearing out,

But the human creatures’ lives!

Stitch – stitch – stitch,

In poverty, hunger and dirt,

Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

But why do I talk of Death?

That Phantom of grisly bone,

I hardly fear its terrible shape,

It seems so like my own –

from “Digging Potatoes, Sebago, Maine”, by Amy E. King

Your blade emerges

     with a mob of them, tawny freckled knobs,

     an earthworm curling over one like a tentacle.

     I always want to clean them with my tongue,

     to taste in this dark mud, in its sparkled scatter

     of mica and stone chips, its soft genealogy

     of birch bark and fiddleheads …

from “Embroidery”, Louise Hayley

Over and under

The white disappears

The lines take shape and

A picture appears

Add the direct link to your new poem to Mr. Linky. Enjoy yourselves. Delight in the poetry of others (and tell them about it).

When Susan returns (August 7^th!), her Midweek Motif will be: Safety.

via