Take Three Words

Drizzly

It’s one of those days when the distinct
scent of petrichor permeates the day;

it sneaks through open windows and leaves
an invisible trail like snot on a child’s sleeve,

or the track of a single plump raindrop
as it trickles down the window pane.

Wipes

As a child, I loved to watch the window cleaner
when he came to wash my grandmother’s
windows, a cheerful chap with a shammy leather.

I’d watch as he set up his extendable ladder,
fill up his bucket, climb higher and higher,
and marvel at the sparkle when the job was done.

Frame

Vincent painted views over and again
of the asylum garden beyond his window frame,
so in love with autumn’s colours, unable to refrain,
admitting to Theo it would be the same every day,
until autumn came tumbling from the trees.
He would never tire of garden, sky and leaves.

Kim M. Russell, 3rd October 2024

‘Window in the Studio’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1889

This Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub, we are Meeting the Bar and counting to three with Laura, who reminds us that today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and the theme is ‘counting’. Laura says that the theme is ‘very fitting for poets as we are also basic mathematicians; adding up syllables, enumerating lines, numbering the verses, subtracting even, as in erasure poetry, so it comes as no surprise that ‘counting’ is a frequent topic of poetry’.

She gives us examples of poems about counting by Margarita Engle and Michelle Boisseau, which I enjoyed.

Our challenge is to write poems with THREE distinctly separate stanzas, choosing one of two prompts that we’ve had before at dVerse. I chose number two, Three little words, a prompt Sarah set us a while ago, using a website that ‘divides the whole world into 3 metre squares with each allocated a combination of 3 words, these words pinpoint your location exactly.’

We can choose our own, a well-known, or a random location from the website what3words.com and use our three words to write a 3 stanza poem, with each word as the topic per stanza, and each stanza numbered or subtitled with the reference word. We can include the reference word within the stanza if not subtitled, and line length, rhymes, meter etc. are optional.

27 thoughts on “Take Three Words”

  2. I like the 3 words you found for a location Kim and how the stanzasdiffer in style and all under the umbrella of ‘window’ – the looking out underscores the whole notion of location and for van Gogh a rather sad but beautiful constant

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  7. I do like how you used the window as the common theme, the different perspectives it gives in each stanza. You’ve reminded me of window cleaners now and how I hated them. They always came on a Saturday morning whether I was at home (in bed) or at my gran’s (in bed) and wouldn’t be able to get up until they’d gone.

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