The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: BROOM

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure and visit Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for Roundup!
For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann. I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?Here are January's prompts: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

BROOM
Before I get to my response, here is a broom poem by one of my favorites, Valerie Worth:

broom

It starts
Out so well,
Its fresh
Gold straws
Cut square,
Flared wide,

But so often
Ends otherwise,
With weary
Wan bristles
All stubbed
To one side.

- Valerie Worth


I guess I don't have a lot of "broom" memories, because the first thing that comes to my mind is a book with a broom: OLD BLACK WITCH! by Wende and Harry Devlin.

I loved this book. Basically it's about a boy named Nicky. He and his mom move into an old house they hope to turn into a B&B, only to find it's already occupied -- by a witch! The witch's broom features heavily in the story. :) With that in mind, I wrote the following poem:


Broom
Mama sayssweep sweep sweepto keep cobwebs at bay
sweep sweep sweepto whisk crumbs away.
But I'd ratherleap leap leap –
RIDE that broom!And maybe, just maybe
Varoom, kaboom!Zip like that old black witchall around the room.
- Irene Latham