Forays into Poetry

Around the same time I began writing this blog, I formed a writing group with two friends who are poets. We do writing exercises mostly oriented toward poetry, but I find that these exercises are helping me to expand in other types of writing as well. 

Last week we selected random words from three randomly-selected books: response, lubricant, symbolize, stone, tongues, plains, thinner, diets, desires. We all really liked what we wrote. Here's my offering.

On these high plains
the air is thinner,
the earth itself on a 
diet of stone.
Whose tongues shall proclaim
their lost desires?
The echoes are silent,
and there is no response.

I had just finished binge-reading A Clash of Kings, the sequel to George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and I was left with such a feeling of desolation that it just came out in this poem. It is interesting how a set of words lend themselves to your unconscious purposes.

For another take on the same set of words, you can click on over to Pink House Poetry.