poem in your pocket day | Thinking Through My Lens

Today is Poem in your Pocket day…and I wasn’t in the classroom with my students today! But, they were all prepared. Yesterday they picked one of their own poems (they had quite a selection since they’ve been writing a poem a day since April began), revised it, and copied it on a piece of paper to put in their pocket today. And lucky for me, my teaching partner encouraged students to share their poems…both in the classroom and beyond.

I did collect a few poems yesterday so I would have some to share with you today. Alice wrote a poem about a crummy old nail…maybe inspired by some of the ordinary poems I’ve written and shared.

Crummy Old Nail

Crummy old nail

served many

purposes

Crummy old nail

dented and

bent

Crummy old nail

proud and

historic

Crummy old nail

brave and

cautious

Crummy old nail

old with

wisdom

upon a

shipwrecked mast,

red

like a

cherry covered

in

rust.

Her brother, Luca, also played around with the ordinary–using the still life structure we explored the other day.

Stool: Still Life

That small stool

standing in the corner,

sulking throughout the day.

It’s surprising when someone

comes his way.

He stops sulking and stands up straight

and if he is lucky,

they sit.

When they leave

he straightens up

and waits for others.

When the sun sets,

he stoops and sits

and lets sleep overpower him.

Snoooooooooooooooore!

I’m not sure what inspired Caleb’s poem…he wrote it on the still life day after he tried a still life poem.

Rocket

Getting ready for launch

fueling the tank

cold on the outside

warm on the inside

a big heart driving

not a robot!

5…4…3…2…1…blast off

you jump into the sky

like you’re on a trampoline

from day to night

in a single flight

in the starry sky

time to attend to dreams

And I’m still fooling around with paint chip poetry. I pulled out some in the orange/yellow family today: fresh squeezed, chamomile tea, and yellow brick road. Here’s today’s attempt:

Oz

I follow the yellow brick road

or in my case

the sandy sidewalk

that leads to the Oz I treasure

Blue skies and blue seas

are a canvas

for the fresh squeezed

dabs

dancing in the breeze

I breathe in and exhale

salt air and wildflowers mix to conjure

the soothing comfort

of chamomile tea

I feel it pulse through my veins

Aaaahhhhh!

©Douillard

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Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket day, the day when poetry is celebrated by carrying a favorite poem in your pocket and sharing it with others. So before we left school today, my teaching partner and I gathered poems for our students to choose from and she made a darling display of pockets that we stuffed with poems and hung on the door.

And when I got home I started thinking about the poem I will carry in my pocket tomorrow. And it’s hard…there are so many wonderful poems out there. I love different poems for different reasons. As I started thinking about poems I know and love, I remembered a favorite that I haven’t revisited in a while.

Valentine for Ernest Mann

by Naomi Shihab Nye
You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23872#sthash.CJvqErxc.dpuf

I love the idea that poems hide…and that you have to live in way that lets you find those

hidden poems. I feel like photography is like that too. It lets me look into the eyes of skunks

and find the beauty they hold. It lets me see weeds as beautiful, tenacious survivors instead

of persistent pests. Beauty is in the geometry, in the contrast of color, in the juxtaposition of

ideas, in the wonder that comes from noticing instead of just walking by.

I think I’ll carry a photo in my pocket tomorrow too. To remind me to live in ways that allows

me to find poems…and pictures.

What will you carry for Poem in Your Pocket Day? How will you live to let poems find you?

Thinking Through My Lens

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Poem in Your Pocket Day: NPM 2019 Day 18

What’s in Your Pocket?