Tell Me A Story: Poetry

My fallback storytelling is to start with what is in front of me. I use details from what I'm looking at or something we did that morning or some concrete event and tell stories from there.

And I've realized that is quite useful, it also can be limiting when I only rely on those techniques.

And I've also realized that LP has NO PRECONCEPTIONS about poetry and all the delightful things that make something poetic (simile, metaphor, imagery and so on). So all the fear voices in my head that criticize my poetic efforts are now dismissed.

So recently I'm reminding myself to play with those things and tell a story about the trees talking with the stars in the sky and a cloud's adventure floating overhead and to imagine eating ice cream is like eating a snowdrift.

This also evolved into a game yesterday when LP was cuddled up in my lap after we spent a good bit of time attempting to plant potatoes (various mishaps occurred, it is quite possible they won't come up). I blew on her and said "Mama is the wind and LP is the tree with lots of leaves" and she giggled. After a few times she started to rock against me and I said "LP is the ocean crashing into Mama as the beach." And she said "crash, crash" getting more intentional in her movements. After a minute or so, she cuddled in again and said "I'm a bird" and when I said "and I am a nest" she said, "Where's mama bird?" So I became that instead.

It was sweet and playful and seemed to fill her up more than a cuddle on its own. (This is pretty crucial these days when I am so hungry for her to play more independently).