Childhood, Trails, Butterfly, Lost

Somewhat begrudgingly, I went to a short poetry workshop last weekend while Shmoogie was at one of her own.  It turned out to be pretty fun, though.  And the teachers had some nifty prompts, which made me think, oh, maybe I could write more often again.  Maybe I should.  Maybe I would...

One of the exercises involved a piece of paper with a bunch of word groups printed on it, four words in each.  Just pick one group and make a poem out of it.   Then another.  Try to write 5 poems in 15 minutes.  (Ha ha ha!!!  I managed 2.5, including this one:

Red leaf,

half caught in a frozen puddle, 

tracery trails of some butterfly’s childhood

about to be lost

under the first snow.)

I’ve since spent longer than 15 minutes (a) dithering over definite vs. indefinite vs. left-out-altogether articles and (b) trying to figure out from google whether any butterfly larva does make the leaf trails I was thinking of... and I’m still not sure.   Lots of different insects do lots of interesting things to leaves, though!