I am terrible at games,
even word games, which you’d think,
wordy as I am, I’d cruise through

like a Sunday spin over smooth road.
Not so much, which makes no difference
to me until I take up a challenge

to convene quartets of sixteen seemingly
random units of language. They have
relationships, the game tells me,

and I puzzle over how to balance
some of them, over what to do with
the rest. I try to find some harmony

among the difference, the diamond
among the remainder pebbles. And,
when to my surprise, I succeed—

not only in making four sets of four,
but also in figuring out how to play
ball in this field of dreams—I’m aflush

and smiling as if I’d whacked one
out of the park, a whole stadium
of word fans cheering my prowess.

•••

(Thanks to Ellen Rowland for the prompt that sent me
to The New York Times word game called Connections.
Below are the words that I attempted to connect in some way…
then I used all but five of them in a poem. You might want to
give this a try, too!)