Poetry Friday: Oops-topus

Tabatha Yeatts is hosting the round up of poetry links and posts today at The Opposite of Indifference. Thanks, Tab!

It’s October, Poetry Friday friends.

Poet Irene Latham is on my mind this week. I hosted a stop on her THIS POEM IS A NEST blog tour, and even tried writing a nestling. You can read that post here.

It’s October first as I write this, and Irene + Octo = her wonderful book, Love, Agnes: Postcards from an Octopus.

I’ve been using a bullet journal (AKA bujo) for several years. I was feeling arty this morning and decided to fire up my watercolor markers and colored pencils to make an October page…  an Octo(ber)pus page. (Thanks for the inspiration, Irene.)

However, I ran into some technical difficulties with my purple cephalopod. And the resulting Oops-topus doodle led me to a poem.

It’s a nonet. For reasons which shall become obvious.

Oops

By Laura Shovan

Dear Octopus, I drew you before

that first jolt of tea woke my brain.

It’s a challenge, keeping track

of all those wandering

tentacles! So, I

miscounted legs.

Forgive me,

Nono-

pus.

I started writing this poem on my morning walk, speaking the first line and a few other phrases into my phone. When I got home, I sat down and started to draft. My drafting page looks like this:

October is off to a silly start for me. I wonder what other Oops-topuses are hiding themselves where we least expect them.

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