Worku is 1

One year ago, on September 9, 2025, Mark and I tried something for the first time.

Take the words from a Wordle attempt. Turn them into a 5–7–5 poem.

Mark wrote:

First TRICK of the light,
the THIRD shadow starts to RAISE
questions in the dusk.

And I wrote:

A PLAIN start today
BIRCH and THRICE got me closer —
and K did the TRICK

That was it. Two little poems.

We didn’t know they were the beginning of anything.

A year later, Worku has grown into thousands of poems written by a community of worki—haiku-like poems, senryu-like poems, zappai-like poems, jokes, grief, nature, nonsense, memories, experiments, failures that somehow became poems, and words none of us would ever have chosen for ourselves.

But these were the first two.

Happy birthday, Worku.

And thank you, Mark, for playing the first day with me. 🐸

September 9, 2025 — Day One