Off the Record
By Penny Rathbun, Staff writer

[Last week was the] final week of National Poetry Month. In celebration I am sure you all [had] been keeping a poetry journal in which you have been entering your observations on the world in brilliant verse comprising ingenious turns of phrase.

In case you’re feeling guilty because you’ve missed the last few entries, you are fortunate to be living in Little Elm. Little Elm motorists drive by signs of found poetry every day. While I am still learning about Little Elm, I’ve long been enamored with Little Elm’s street names. There are bits of poetry all over town.

Surely only happy things happen at Sunbeam and Morning Dew. There must be a lot of artists who live on Aurora Mist, Evening Mist, and Dawn Mist drives. Only royalty must live on Princess or Queen Ways or Crown Point.

What adventurers live on Wilderness Way or Eagle Mountain or Ponderosa Ridge? Eternal hippies must reside on Starshine Drive, and Twilight Star Drive has to be the place for citizens of the universe. Heroines of fairytales just have to live on Annalea or Little Anne Drives or Breanna Way. Do characters from fantasy stories live on Dragonback Pass?

Lone Springs Drive, Thunderbrook or Nighthawk Lane must be where heroes out of western novels live.

Little Elm seems like a poetic and magical place if you just read the street names, which makes it the perfect place to live during National Poetry Month.

Another poetic amusement is to create poems from phrases found almost anywhere, such as headlines. Here is a poem created from front page headlines from the April 24, 2003 “Little Elm Journal.”

Fleur Connoisseur

A natural portrait comes into focus,

Wildflowers putting on a spring show.

Oak Point senior known worldwide for iris work.

Politics getting salty as election day nears

Feeling ducky?

[I hope you] enjoy what’s left of National Poetry Month, started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Poems in disguise can be found almost anywhere, from the labels on cans of insecticide to street signs.

To enjoy poetry you don’t have to be well-versed in writing poetry, just in finding it.

Penny Rathbun is community editor of The Little Elm Journal. She may be reached at prathbun@acnpapers.com.



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