Curls and Sand Castles

the cat’s curled up
purring in my lap

in my mind’s eye
a curl of butter
on a Bournemouth
guest house breakfast plate

the bob of your curly head
as you built sand castles with moats
the curl of waves
and your contented smile

Kim M. Russell, 2017

curls-and-sandcastles

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille

The first Quadrille of 2017 is hosted by Björn, who started the new year by sharing an extract from a poem my grandfather used to recite to me when I was a child:

There was a little girl
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Björn would like us to write a poem of forty-four words exactly, including the word ‘curl’, which can be used as a noun , a verb, an adjective (curly) or we might even want to write about curling.

62 thoughts on “Curls and Sand Castles”

    1. Thank you, Alison. That was a particularly lovely couple of days away, nearly thirty years ago, just the two of us, and we spent most of our time on the beach building sand castles.

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  17. I love how you move from a ‘cat curled up’ to a ‘curl of butter’ to ‘curly head’ and to ‘curl of waves’. Such a lovely way of reminiscing the past.

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  19. your curls so well-crafted Kim – butter pat particularly evocative with its mouth of the Bourne associations p.s. coincidentally we both did Bournemouth

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  23. I love that you repeat the motive of curling and curled things, so to say, to create a sort of juxtaposition. I really love how you executed it and that the poem can be read as more than 1, smaller poems.

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