Fifty Precious Words Entry

Sourdough bread and sourdough starter with wild yeast and lactobacilli pulled from the air.

Nice dishwasher in the background! The bananas were a nice touch too, but that brown lump is the inside shot of my sourdough bread and the yucky looking goo in the bottle is the starter we made it from.

I didn't think I could pull it off, but as I was scanning through some old poems I wrote for some reason, I realized I could probably polish one up and turn it into an entry for Vivian Kirkfield's 50 Precious Words Contest (see rules here).

We've been slammed this week with school, and as you can see from the photo above, I finally succeeded in making a real sourdough bread--from a sourdough starter that we cultured from the air. Yeah baby, pioneer style! 

So I figured, if I can pull off a sourdough, I can surefire pull of a kid's story in 50 words or less and shoot, why not do it rhyme, especially since I already had some ... started (insert cheesy drum roll). 

I guess I was still coming off my victorious sourdough glow--or maybe it was just the sourdough starter fumes--but I am not a poet and do not usually write in rhyme so I knew this would be as arduous a task as making bread. (But thank you Vivian for the courage to try!)

My first attempt came in at 71 words! Grrr. The next one came it at 20 and the one I tried after that came it at a whopping 37 words! Woohoo.

So here you have it:

 Susie's Zoozies

I want a pet moose, 

and a pink sparkly goose, 

and a hippo the size of a peanut.

Then give me soft moss 

for my bald albatross 
and an owl who will roost in my tree hut. 

And just because I'm feeling daring, I'll include my other two attempts (Not to be considered as my entry in Vivian's contest):

Storm Clouds

Greedy goblins grasping high,

Stealing sunshine from the sky,

Loud they thunder, stomp and moan,

Raining curses on my home.

And the one I really wanted to enter but couldn't get under 71 (grrrrr) words:

Echo in my Pocket

There’s an echo in my pocket 

trying to reach my ear. 

It scares me, I must say so 

I put it there last year.

I stuck it in the jacket 

I left out in the snow

And must have froze it solid, 

But now the sun’s full glow.

Alas, it’s started melting 

and dripping down my leg.

What’s that the poor thing's saying?

“Help! I’m stuck inside an 

egg…

      egg…

           egg…”

I can't leave this post without sharing something fun from my children. This week it's my baby's turn--with her permission. We did synonym poems on Monday. I'd never heard of them, but I found them in a book I picked up from a library inventory sale. The idea is to form a couplet using synonyms. This was my littlest one's first attempt:

Jumpy

Squirmy wormy

Jumpy, bouncy

My whole body's getting pouncy.

And with that, I will bounce back to tasks of the day. Have a great week and good luck to everyone in the contest.