Spring
begins
by painting
the neighborhood
in a coat of green
so vibrant you can smell
chlorophyll seeping through pores
renewing and greening this place
with leaves unfurling, bright buds bursting
spreading life, spreading joy, new beginnings
In
the cool
clay, damp earth
molded folded
pressed squeezed smoothed by hand
mud takes flight, wings emerge
flutter flapping, becoming
avian in form, in features
cupped in smallish hands, nested fingers
forming life out of the earth, small birds chirp
Some days writing opportunities mesh, with one complementing another. Verselove offered a form today: an etheree. I’ve written to this form before (you can see an etheree about poppies here). And then on a network call this afternoon, I had an invitation to write in response to the National Poetry Month poster, with some lines from a Naomi Shihab Nye poem.
Here is my etheree:
This is the World
shared
you, me
together
this is the world
I want to live in
dancing to my own beat
feeling rhythms inside me
different from those you’re tapping
synched or syncopated, we can lift
each other, singing out tunes the world needs
When Erica over at Verselove offered an invitation to write about flowers, I knew immediately that I would write about the California state flower: the golden poppy. Poppy’s feel like my alter ego–they open up in the warmth of the sun and close and duck their heads when the weather cools and the sky is cloudy.
On my first day back in the classroom after a week away for spring break, I knew I wasn’t up for the technicalities of crafting a villanelle. Instead I opted for the simplicity and constraint of an etheree: a ten line poem that begins with one syllable and builds to ten in that tenth line.
Ode to the California Golden Poppy
Pop
of gold
on roadsides
California
golden poppies sing
delicate beautiful
dancing in the warm breezes
It’s spring! I’m here! Pay attention!
Carpets of gold ignite the hillsides
pure California sun in a blossom
I wake up in the morning wondering what I will write as my poem of the day for April’s National Poetry Month. Today’s #verselove prompt was all about letters.
It didn’t take me long to decide that I would write about SLO–especially when I snapped this mural (and cow) on my rainy day downtown exploration. (Do you know that SLO has the tiniest art museum? “Snug” but soooo good!). Anyway, in addition to knowing I would write about these letters, I needed something more. I needed some kind of constraint to structure my thinking and my poem. I decided on an Etheree…a poem that begins with 1 syllable and builds to 10 (or you can go the other way from 10 to 1).
Here it is:
In Three Letters
SLO
Letters
Iconic
Small town wordplay
How SLO can you go?
Plastered on walls/billboards
Imagine the possible
Puns, playful allusions, bad jokes
Alphabetic marketing reminds
This is the best place in the world to be
Today’s #verselove prompt was “death in a poem” and I struggled. My mind searched for ways to weave the theme of death into something I could handle on this last weekday of spring break. You’ll not be surprised that I turned to nature. I was thinking about the difference in the way we describe landslides (or in our parlance, cliff failures) on the southern CA coastline as compared to the way that landslides were described in Zion National Park. There, the landslide was an expected way that nature sculpts the landscape. Of course, there were also not multimillion dollar homes perched along the rim that crumbled. So, I’m not so sure that this qualifies as death in a poem, maybe instead it is life in a poem. I chose to use an etheree–a 10-line form that begins with a single syllable and build, adding a syllable to each line until you reach the tenth line with ten syllables.
Cliffs
Erode
Fail daily
Crumbling downhill
Everything tumbling
Into a pile below
Erosion meet gravity
Cliff death creates new habitat
Algae covers what was once a road
In nature, death offers new beginnings
Today’s poem is an etheree. It is a poem that grows from one syllable to 10, and in this case, inspired by power lines I noticed overhead.
Notice the Mundane
Wires
Above
Lines stretched high
Against the sky
Electricity
Depending on power
Invisible, essential
Ordinary infrastructure
Not taking in what is right above
Look up, look again, notice the mundane
®Douillard
Have you ever written an etheree? I hadn’t–and hadn’t even heard of this particular poetic form until I came across the book Thanku: Poems of Gratitude by Miranda Paul. As I read I came across a poem–an etheree-All This by Liz Garton Scanlon. A poem that begins with one syllable and builds one syllable at a time until it reaches ten syllables in line ten. In All This, Scanlon shows appreciation and gratitude for a small pleasure (or maybe a collection of small pleasures)…the snow, a book, a bubble bath, a cat…
Coming back from our winter break in early January, this seemed like a perfect alternative to resolution making and would ease us all back into writing and reading and thinking and planning. So, in #collaboration with Liz Garton Scanlon, my students and I embarked on some etheree writing…and finally…today, I got their finished Postcards to Myself up on the classroom wall!
It feels like serendipity that this culmination coincided with the #clmooc poetry port invitation #collaboration! I love that I can celebrate my students’ poetry and the power of a mentor text…and my own poem too.
And here is a a closer view of a couple of student creations (8 and 9 year olds)…the first by H:
Bone
Skull
Fossil
Dinosaur
Bones in the ground
Brushing off the dust
Prehistoric fossils
Putting on the soft plaster
Breaking the hard rock to find bone
T-Rex has a small name but it’s huge
Fossils are everywhere in the world.
And another by B:
The Art of Folding Origami
Fold
sharp ends
crisp paper.
Origami
the art of folding
take your time, be precise
make sure you use square paper.
I can fold cranes, swords, hats, and more
fold until your run out of paper
origami is hard, so keep trying.
And my own:
Inhale
Beach
with sand
bright sunshine
cool frothy waves
and perky sea birds.
I walk and watch and shoot
camera ready, focused
helping me see the world clearly.
I have so much to be grateful for
and I breathe in: inhaling sea’s bounty.
®Douillard
Now it’s your turn to join in the collaboration! Will you try an etheree?
Thinking Through My Lens 