Scrabble – where every letter has its place, and every word holds a thrill, and in the placing of the tiles, the silence enthralls until… the final move!

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Poetic Sundays: The Silence of the Tiles: Scrabble!

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; he fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.

April 13th observes National Scrabble Day, and that led me to searching about it on the Google Arts and Culture page (reached via the link for today’s art resource). There, I discovered older versions of the game that offer a fascinating glimpse into its history! And then led to writing a Scrabble poem. I knew I had mentioned the game earlier on my blog, and noticed I wrote another poem about it here (for NaPoWriMo).

Do you play Scrabble? Your most memorable word played? Do let me know

My Attempt

The Silence of the Tiles

1. The First Draw

Let us place those cool tiles on the board one by one
As they make up some words, and score us some points too! 
Then, we send a little prayer, hope for some luck
That we get the Z, I, and the U and Q too
For then whoever gets the luck of the draw y’all
Well, of course, they wiill be the winner after all!(??)

2. Glimmers and Sighs

We reach for the black bag, the velvet mouth half-closed
As the sun through the curtains spills gold on the board.
One sighs in relief, and the other heaves a sigh
In silence, each one waits for our turn on the board.
We keep on drawing. It feels like some kind of fate.
The tiles we need will surely come. They’re in our fate

3. The Heat of the Game

Someone plays ‘quiet’, and it sure has that effect!
And then you add an ‘er’, for a double word score
An ‘argh’ follows—tile-scramble, shuffle, and some more
As everyone now has to work to up that score
In that moment, we search for the very right play,
As letters collide, we all chase points in the fray

4. It All Comes Down To…

The tiles in the bag are now down to just a few
A new word appears. A score is made. A soft cheer.
You put your hand in, it reaches into empty.
Another move. Another word. Another cheer.
You look inside again, wonder – it is all done?
Coincidentally, the word just played – done!

5. The Final Words

Now all that is left are the tiles left on the slats,
We spell out time, and level, and gone, and remain.
The points don’t matter, but still we keep on counting
You raise your brow at gone, smile faintly at remain.
We don’t speak, but the silence hums with the gold hush.
Each last tile lands softly, in that not-wordless hush.

~ Vidya Tiru @ LadyIn Read Writes

Recently

On My Blog and On the Home Front

These posts made their way out into the world on my blog this past week:

• K is for the Kenning, Krishna, and (well)Nothing More
• J is for Jargon, a Jumble of Joy, and More!
• I is for Imagery, Irony, and Interesting -ness
• How to Hold a Hadron With Words? & Hats Off to Hillyer Too
• G is for the Groovy Grook, Ghazal-ing Greens, and More
• F is for Fibonacci Fun and Fictive Fragments: More Fun!
• Sunday Scribblings #218: Not Ready for Prime Time, Still Wonderful!

On the home-front, not much…

Upcoming

On My Blog and Home front

continuing my a-z obviously.. and going to be a quite quiet week!

This Week’s Celebrations

Literary Celebrations (close-to-it also!)

• Literary birthdays this week of April include: Mireille Guiliano on April 14th; Henry James and Jeffrey Archer on the 15th; Carol Bly and Tracy K Smith on April 16th; Nick Hornby on the 17th of April; Alexandra Adornetto on the 18th; Stanley Fish on the 19th; the 20th celebrates Mary Hoffman, Sebastian Faulks, and Rebecca Malakai
• The 18th celebrates National Columnists’ Day

Foodie Celebrations

• It is National Pecan Day on the 14th
• While the 16th of April is National Eggs Benedict Day
• Followed by National Cheeseball Day April 17th
• Next up is National Animal Crackers Day on the 18th while
• the 19th of April observes National Garlic Day and National Banana Day
• Then April 20th brings with it National Cheddar Fries Day and National Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day

Other Celebrations

• April 14th is full of observations; I mean, it observes National Dolphin Day,  National Reach as High as You Can Day, Look Up at the Sky Day, National Gardening Day, and International Moment of Laughter Day
• Followed by National Take a Wild Guess Day and World Art Day on April 15th
• Then it is National Orchid Day and  World Voice Day on the 16th of April
• And the 17th of April is well……. Blah Blah Blah Day.
• While the 18th is International Day for Monuments and Sites, International Amateur Radio Day followed by
• National Look Alike Day on the 20th of April

Wrapping up my Sunday Scribblings

So dear reader, you have reached the end of this Sunday Scribblings! As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and suggestions about this post. And do let me know if you plan to celebrate any of these mentioned celebrations this coming week/month?

Linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Reviewer and the Sunday Salon. Also linking up to UBC, NaPoWriMo

And you can find all my A-Z+ posts (this year and previous years’ as well) here:

A to Z Challenge Posts