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Rex Goes Outside at Night
This poem started out as a poem about our shed cat, Rex. (He’s a shed cat because we don’t have a barn, so I can’t call him a barn cat.) He lives outside with Luna and we hope helps keep the gopher population at a manageable level. By the time I wrote the second stanza of this poem, it had changed into a poem about a completely different cat–not a shed cat, like my Rex, living a wild life outside, but an indoor/outdoor cat, longing for the great outdoors, but scared out of his wits. I had a lot of fun with the rhymes in this poem, and also the…
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Piglets, the Newest Addition to Our Hobby Farm
Meet Wilbur (named by Samuel), Fluffy (named by Ruthie), and Uncle (named by me). They’re Idaho Pasture Pigs, and they’re so much fun to have around. They nibble on our boots when we come in to say hello, and Luna likes to sniff their noses when they poke them through the crack in the door. Eventually, they’ll move from the field to our plates, but for now we’re enjoying learning about their habits and petting their soft, wiry backs as they munch on grain. When we get a new “pet,” I like to write about it. So, here’s a poem about our three little piglets! Piglets Hard-nosed, snub-nosed,Rooting through the…
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A Lullaby & The Introduction to My Book, The Light Gatherers {New Music Monday}
This is a very special New Music Monday, and I appreciate that you’re here, visiting my website. I’ve been working on a book for a little over a year, called The Light Gatherers. (You can read the Prologue to the book here, which I wrote as a writing exercise as part of The Habit.) I don’t feel like any book is complete without a poem or a song; most of my favorite books include at least one or the other. The Hobbit includes the songs in which the dwarves sing about helping Bilbo with the dishes and the Lonely Mountain. The Princess and the Goblin includes Curdie’s rhymes, which scare…
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The Edge of the Season
I was out walking a few days ago and noticed how everything around our house has changed. The woods don’t look lush and new anymore, but rather old and tired. The leaves on the aspens are starting to turn yellow, and the fields around us resemble toasted marshmallows. Grasshoppers startle us as we walk through the grass, and the song of the cicada thrums through the air. Fall is just around the corner. We start school in less than three weeks. Where did the summer go? Here is another new poem for you to enjoy, along with a few more photos from around our yard, including one of the biggest…
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Garbage Cans and Apple Blossoms: A Poem for Young Readers
We are under a wind advisory here in the Midwest. The gusts of wind have been so strong these last couple hours that I can feel the house shaking. I went out a little while ago to rescue the garbage cans. One of them was blowing across the frozen snow, and the other had gotten stuck in a ditch at the end of our driveway. The wind was grabbing pieces of recycling out of it and hurling them into the air. I hid the garbage cans along the east side of our house, out of the wind and safe for the time being. Praise God for sturdy houses and functioning…