The Night Before Christmas…That worked well!

It’s Saturday, which means I’m putting out another Friday Fictioneers story from my archives and I just happen to have one that is about the night before Christmas.  It’s Christmas Eve Day, so how could that possibly work any more neatly, I ask you?  I hope you enjoy this bit of Christmas poetry and also a joy-filled Christmas Eve.

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
(With thanks to Clement Clarke Moore for the original)

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Just one creature was stirring and it wasn’t a mouse.
The stockings were hung on the mantel with care
Just a jump-able distance away in the air.

The tree looked delightful, amazing to see,
The perfect playground for a Christmas kitty.
The family was snoozing away for the night.
Now was the time for some Christmas delight.

All of a sudden, there arose such a clatter
They rushed down to see the whole lot in tatters.
But in the kitchen, there was nothing to see
Save an innocent-looking, complacent kitty!

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I struggled this week to not run amok and re-write the entire poem because I had some great lines that I couldn’t get in to this version. (May do it another time.) However, I ruthlessly channeled my inner Rich/Nazi English teacher (NOT saying that’s you, Rich, but I know you’ll give me a hard time about it anyway) and pared and re-pared until I actually got down to 100 words, my goal each week just because it is. 🙂  I hope it gave you a good laugh and got you in the Christmas spirit!

Read-aloud

I’d planned to do a post on some of Chicago’s architecture that we saw on our river cruise last Friday, but I have a sore throat and runny nose, so I don’t feel like spending much time on my laptop.  Earlier, I was think about poetry and how much fun it was to read aloud to our girls (whether poetry or books.)

As I’ve mentioned before, we had a set of the orange Childcraft books and among the volumes I still have are several with poetry. Poetry is meant to be read aloud, so if you have young children, read it aloud to them.  If not, feel free to read this one of my favorites aloud if you’re somewhere where you can do so without causing people to think you insane.  Or, just let them!

Eletelephony
Laura Elizabeth Richards

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)
Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

“Laura Elizabeth Richards was born February 27, 1850, Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a social reformer who later gained fame as an abolitionist and was the founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind. Her mother was the poet Julia Ward Howe who is best known as the author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

From All Poetry

For more of Laura’s poetry, click here.

Today it blew so hard

Today it blew so hard
	that I considered taking my shower
	fully clothed
lest the roof blow off
	and I
                like Dorothy
	land in Oz
or
(more likely?)
	be left exposed
	to the neighbor’s gaze

The math of love and life

I wrote the first verse of this one day as a response to a mathematical poem my husband wrote.  The rest is just something fun for Sunday.

Squaring my shoulders
I admit you wrecked the angle of my heart.
I hadn’t factored in how prime you were
And our lives have intersected ever since.
It may not seem rational
But we do have many common factors
So it all adds up.

Then we went forth and multiplied.
Our children were a divergent series
and often diametrically opposed
but we felt they had some of our eccentricity.
No formula to raising children;
sometime you just have a hypothesis.
But the sum of it all was positive.

The probability was that we’d still be rational
(and it seems the parent functions still are)
although that may be a product of our imagination.
Thankfully, we’re not yet a null set
and the odds are in our favor
that we got most of the answers right.
Now the focus is back on the pair of us.

Eletelephony

I’ve already introduced you to Laura E. Richards, author of “Ballad of China”, https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/a-ballad-of-china/.  Here’s another of her poems, which I also read in one of our orange Childcraft books.  In these days of cell phones, children might not understand how the elephant could get his truck tangled in the phone, but they’ll enjoy the rhythms and rhymes.