Orange you glad it’s Poetry Friday, Sweet Pea? 2014 Poetry Project

Welcome back to the Pantone ® Poetry Project. We’re in our last five days of writing in response to interior paint colors. Sound strange? Heck – I’ll take inspiration in whatever form you’ve got.

The Three Muses by Orestes Gaulhiac
at RDZ Fine Art

Find your poetry muse
at Anastasia's blog, Poet! Poet!
Anastasia is hosting
Poetry Friday today.

All month, poets and writers have been joining me with their colorful poems and sketches. (Read a post with the "rules" of the project here.)

On Day 28, I’ll be giving away prizes to some of the participating writers.

But that's a few days away. It's still the 24th day of our Pantone ® Poetry project. We are writing about two colors today: Sweet Pea and Orange Ochre.

Day 24 Sweet Pea
Pantone ®  15-0531

Day 24 Orange Ochre
Pantone ®  16-1253

I was expecting to write about the tiger lilies, thick as weeds at the side of my house. I was expecting that my mother’s springtime garden, with pea pods growing on a vine, would make an appearance. I was expecting Halloween.

Instead of lilies and sweet peas, my poem came in the form of a spider. Orange Ochre inspired me to pull out an old poem. I haven’t looked at this since my teens were in preschool.

Miss Spider needed some polishing up, a little revision. But she’s ready to come out from under the car and reveal herself, as she did all those years ago when I was picking up my youngest from preschool.

Marbled Orb Weaver Spider

By Laura Shovan

I know I saw something

scuttle under the car.

A pebble-sized pumpkin

on eight spiny legs.

It’s a spider, says Mom.

What a lovely bright orange.

We watch the spider move

into the sun—orange ochre legs

carrying the round pumpkin ball

of its body, its back marked

with dark brown grimaces.

A tiny jack-o-lantern

ready to attack.

From Bug Guide!

What's That Bug? says
she's also called a Pumpkin Spider

Here's a poem from Michael C. Davis of Virginia. This one is for high schoolers and up, not for younger readers.

Ocher
by Michael C. Davis

First, the black, like meal
sifted through the fingers.
Night, where now you are.

Then the orange
smeared on your cheeks.
Forever may the sun be.

Finally, the red
to pool at the base of the pit
as if you had not died
but miscarried
and life was but an interrupted dream.

Diane Mayr of Random Noodling shares this funny narrative poem for Sweet Pea.

When I Read Russian Novels
by Diane Mayr

Just out of college I went to work for 
a university library while attending 
graduate school. I had the time and 
patience in those days for Russian 
novels.  A good number of evenings, 
weekends, subway rides, and lunch 
hours were spent with the library's

brand-spanking-new copy of the 
five hundred page novel, And Quiet
Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov.
One day, in the cafeteria while I read,
I sipped green split pea soup. Inevitably,
I spilled it on the book's unsullied pages.
Horrified, I blotted the soup as best as

I could, but, to this day, I'm sure the Don 
Cossacks still leap across the pea green 
puddle as they traverse Russia looking 
for war, romance, and everything else 
a character craves in an novel existence. 
Forty-years gone, I now read chapbooks
and write about green split pea soup.

I admit -- I have more than once accidentally schmutzed a library book.

Please be sure to visit Margaret Simon’s blog, Reflections on the Teche, today. I was so excited to hear that Margaret’s students “did our chalkabration poetry with colors, inspired by your project. I will be posting for Poetry Friday.” I can't wait to check it out, Margaret.

I will post your Sweet Pea and Orange Ochre poems throughout the day. Feel free to leave them in the comments.

Tomorrow, have a very different pair of colors: Plein Air and Syrah. Are you imagining Claude Monet painting en plein air, a glass of red wine resting on his easel?

Day 25 Plein Air
Pantone ®  13-4111

Day 25 Syrah
Pantone ®  19-1535

Photograph of Monet painting
by the water lily pond, 1920.
From Monetpainting.net