Monthly Archives: April 2025

How Many Poems? #NPM25 Day 30

A poem a day for 30 days, which also means I have read poem upon poem upon poem for 30 days. I’ve read poems to my students, poems written by my students, poems offered as invitations, poems written by others in this poem writing community. I’ve struggled with words, celebrated with words, thrown words at my notebook to see which stuck, deleted words from my digital pages (again and again and again), fallen in love with words, admired the words written by others, and amassed quite a number of words written. I’ve chuckled and giggled, gasped and wondered…and shed a few tears too. I feel like I know poets I have never met, connected with poets from other time zones and places, and learned to recognized poets by their style, their posting time, their poetic voice and the way they respond to my poems. My poet heart feels both empty and full at the same time, grateful for all the words and already missing the demand for still more words. Will I write tomorrow? I’m sure I will. Will it be a poem? Probably not. But then again, who knows? My email box offered up Georgia Heard’s May Poetry Calendar today along with explicit permission to write small. Who can resist that?

Month ends with a splash

words falling like confetti

connection through poems

@kd0602

If: NPM25 Day 29

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Last week I came across a list of someone’s favorite children’s books of 2025 and was immediately drawn to If I Could Choose a Best Day. It’s a collection of poems that all begin with the word If, edited by Irene Latham and Charles Waters. I do love a great collection of poetry–especially a collection that includes living poets. I’m sure that no one is surprised that I needed to buy yet another poetry book to read to my students.

Before reading the book today, I had asked my students, as part of our morning message, what poem they might write if the poem began with the words If I… Their imaginations went right away to ideas like If I could fly… and If I met a unicorn…

After recess, it was time to read the book. (It had arrived on Saturday and I read through the poems over the weekend). Like Welcome to the Wonder House (that we read last week and I wrote about here), the book is organized into different categories of poems. They include: Everyday Magic, The Power of You, Kinfolk and Companions, and Anything is Possible. I read a variety of poems from each section. My students recognized poets we had read before and they noticed that all the poems began with the word If, but only a few began with If I. There were poems about pencils, poems about bikes, poems about birds, and poems about words. There were poems about friendship, poems about wishes, and poems about peace.

And then it was time for some writing. Under the influence of the possibilities offered by the word If, my students began to craft their own poems. I love when ideas pour rather than trickle. Ideas were flowing, but there was only enough time to hear a few students read an early draft. I’m hoping to have time to go back to these poems tomorrow.

So in the spirit of following the If… Here is my own early draft:

If the ocean were my bedroom

my dreams would be salty and big enough

to hold a blue whale

balancing the earth on a single puff of breath

before diving back into the depths of sleep

If the ocean were my bedroom

I would be lullabied by sea birds

and rocked to sleep by sea stars dancing on tiny tube feet

and wake

to the beauty of biodiversity

and possibility of interconnectedness

lessons learned in watery dreams

waiting to be lived

today

@kd0602

You’ll notice that I have not included a title for my poem. Stefani over at Verselove has reminded us today that titles matter and influence our reading of poems. Any suggestions for this one of mine?

A Change in the Schedule: NPM25 Day 28

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Ducks in a row

meetings planned

appointments pointed

and then

POP

the crown detaches

quickly pushed back into place

but the damage is done

to the dental work

to the schedule

to the planning

to the roadmap of the day

Flexibility and patience

dance

do-si-doing along with frustration and overwhelm

carefully avoiding each others’ toes

Phone calls made

emails sent

schedules rescheduled

Ducks paddled

rows realigned

Hopefully the tooth

will be recrowned

tomorrow

so calm and order

will once again

reign

@kd0602

Ode to the Sea: NPM25 Day 27

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Traffic crawls

lot’s full

secret parking is not so secret today

a sea wall of humanity

lines my beach

(I’m not mad, everyone should have a relationship with the sea)

As I walk, the sea wall falls away

ocean whispers in my ears

untangling thoughts, urging my shoulders to drop

briny breeze tickles my nose

ruffles my hair

urging me to breathe in and out

in rhythm with the waves

whimbrel whistles

egret sways in the surf

crabs creep with their sideways shuffle

the wonder of wild creatures

wraps me in a cocoon of comfort

relieved and ready

to reenter

a peopled world

@kd0602

Irritating Eyes: NPM25 Day 26

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Scott’s prompt to write a poem about a minor ailment made finding a subject easy, but figuring out how to make a poem of it was much harder today. And as often happens, I had to find a structure to wrangle my words. I came back to old friend etheree, pushing my thinking into 10 lines.

Irritating Eyes

Chronic dry eye is all about water

overflowing river, ocean waves

water that isn’t wet enough

to soothe scratchy, itchy eyes

tears fall, nose runs, makeup

smears across the face

wet eyes so dry

no relief

in sight

yet

@kd0602

Room of Ordinary Things: NPM25 Day 25

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For today’s poetry inspiration in our first grade classroom, I pulled out Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s Welcome to the Wonder House and we read a poem or two from each “room.” Students loved the rooms–and were already thinking about rooms that weren’t represented in the book. And then we all wrote. They were to choose a “room” that they felt connected to (I did say yes to those who wanted to combine rooms) and then pick the kind of poem they wanted to write. I noticed students writing short poems (we’ve written Hay(na)ku, Haiku, and 16 word poems in the last week or so), question poems, and poems of their own design. I had a student telling me she decided not to use any capital letters of punctuation like William Carlos Williams did in The Red Wheelbarrow. I can feel all the ways that poetry has seeped into their bones and their souls this year. It was a hectic day today with too many things pulling my at my attention, so I only really got a glimpse at what got written–we’ll get back to these pieces on Monday.

I decided to try a poem from the room of ordinary things–and wrote about dandelions. I guess it could also be located in the room of nature or maybe even the room of gardens. But I like that dandelions are everywhere–even where they are not wanted! I wrote several different kinds of poems, but decided on the Haiku to share today.

small yellow forest

blossoms on my front yard

explodes in wind blown seeds

@kd0602

Springtime Haibun: NPM25 Day 24

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Spring is a time for bees and buds and blossoms. It seems that everything is in motion, including my students. We’ve passed the time of settled in and are now in the time of change. Plants are sprouting in all the shades of green and my students are sprouting in all the volumes of loud. There is so much they need to say: to each other, to me, to anyone passing by.

Roly polies have become their latest obsession. Those tiny pill bugs are everywhere. And my students are intent on “saving” them (or squishing them, depending on the student). What was once a line of first graders walking to class has now become a mob of children on hands and knees scooping up these little curled crustaceans to protect them from the feet of their peers. Except instead of just moving them to a safer place than the hallway sidewalk, these small creatures often find themselves tucked into pockets and backpacks, or being “petted” by a soft 7-year-old finger on its ribbed back.

In science they are studying birds: their beaks, their feet, their wings. And considering how those parts work together to help the birds survive. In class we took balls of clay, used the meaty part of the side of our hands to flatten and shape them, and crafted our own ceramic birds. A mistake on my part means that the feet they molded will not be attached…but that is another story.

In spring students show off. They strut their stuff. Confidence levels are spiking. They are testing the limits, the boundaries, the rules, their own abilities. It’s the most wonderful time of the year and the hardest season for teaching. But sunshine helps, clay helps, and carefully constructed classroom community prevails…even in spring.

Skies filled with chirping

birds, textured rainbowed feathers

handmade, formed from clay

Things to Do: NPM25 Day 23

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There is a certain kind of overwhelm that enters the classroom when the number of remaining school days drops below 30. Student learning skyrockets with confidence at its maximum–these should be the glory days. But at the same time, spring brings forth the “too big for your britches” behaviors that make teaching hard. Maybe it’s a defense students develop to inoculate themselves against the pain of leaving this classroom that has become oh-so-comfortable.

While Barbara over at Verselove offered an invitation to write a things to do poem, I’m not sure my poem turned out so things to do-ish. Luckily, likes moms and childbirth, teachers mostly forget the pain and remember the joys that come from teaching. As I ended today’s teaching day by having students share their 16-word poems inspired by William Carlos Williams, some of the earlier frustrations with less than stellar classroom behaviors were erased. I’m thinking maybe I should call this a Things I’ve Learned poem.

Things to Do: Spring Version

Bees buzzing

flower to blossom to bud

classroom’s a-buzz too

pollination taking hold, growth is everywhere

Poems sprouting

first graders composing

in their heads

fingers counting

how many words did William Carlos Williams use?

Tasks multiplying

let’s change access to the

report card system

as T3 opens and assessments pour in

12 characters or is it 16 for that new password?

Holding want-tos and have-tos

balancing the 26 days remaining

planning lessons that will be scrapped

in the frenzy of endings

and beginnings

building new classrooms with the students

we haven’t yet let go

@kd0602

An Earth Day Prose Poem: NPM25 Day 22

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Sometimes Ocean roars in like a dragon, frothing and swirling, energy radiating from every salty drop, tossing boats, leveling cliffs, chasing swimmers to shore. Every scale and feather ripples in this self-induced storm, power is the name of the game. Other days Ocean is a mirror, calmly reflecting the world around, inviting bare feet, sand castle builders, and sunset seekers. Still waters run deep and Ocean is seldom still and often deep. Beneath the surface lies worlds unlike those we know on dry land. Curiosities are common. Ocean makes a home for the octopus who is a master of disguise, changing shape and color at will. Pelican skims the surf above, joined by its squadron overseeing the shoreline, pouches poised for a quick snack. Ocean reminds us that water is everything: power and life and home. Whether dragon or mirror, to preserve life on our planet Ocean requires our respect and protection. Now is our time to roar.

Five Things I Did Last Week: NPM25 Day 21

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Five things I did last week:

Rolled with an earthquake on a Monday morning in my classroom while my students were out at their music class. It was not THE big one, but it was a big one.

Realized I made a BIG mistake in preparing our class ceramics project. Now our birds with feet will be footless…or footloose as they fly freely with no visible feet. Determined to turn this mishap into a beautiful oops…with a surprise twist (yet to be announced).

Finished reading a book (a memoir). Started reading two books, one a self-indulgent crime novel that came up on my online library holds, the other a nonfiction book about leadership that arrived on my doorstep last week (a book I didn’t order–but I do know who did).

Closed the rings on my fitness app every day last week, every day in April so far, every day for the year 2025 (and 2024 and 2023…) Has this become an obsession?

Wrote a poem each day, posted a poem each day, taught children about poetry each day, found myself immersed in poetry each day, swam in the poetry (mostly avoided treading water), breathing in the words, stroking through the rhythms, floating in the words of others, splashing in a variety of forms, propelling myself to experiment, dive deeply, hold my breath and hope I don’t drown. And when I feel like I’m drowning, I find myself grabbing for a life preserver: another poem.

@kd0602