Paint Chip Poetry / / By

Guess My Hometown

My hometown is neither little nor big
See if you can guess it, now on with this gig
No need to look far and no need to squint
Just pay attention to all of my hints

My town got its start as a port on the lake
Where fog rolled in and immigrants claimed stake
The border war of 1835 would seal its fate
The state to the south would be shipping its freight

The skilled craftsmen there made glass from sand
And many other artifacts were crafted by hand
The fulcrum of a pyramid can balance quite great
Creating scales very famous, no springs, honest weight

The spotlight of wartime ushered a new era for keeps
And Willys Overland became home of the Jeeps
The citizens work hard, but they also play and have friends
To relax they chew bubblegum and watch the Mud Hens

There’s a song about a man, left alone by Lucille
He had four hungry children and a crop in the field
Another songwriter spent a week there one day
They roll back the sidewalks precisely at 10, he did say

My town is too north for jasmine or palm trees to grow
But many countryside cornfields contain a scarecrow
If you haven’t guessed it by now, you probably never will
My hometown is Toledo, part of my heart is there still

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The referenced songwriters and their Toledo songs:

A Toledo comedy album that was not worked into the poem:

Toledo in a better light:

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Guess My Hometown is my poem in response to Linda Kruschke’s Paint Chip Poetry Challenge Prompt #25. The challenge is to write a poem in response to the prompt card that includes all seven of the seven paint chip words or phrases. The prompt phrase is My Hometown and the prompt words are: jasmine, spotlight, fog, bubblegum, pyramid, scarecrow, and sand. 

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