Some days you just need to keep it short. And when those days present themselves, Haiku can be a solution.
Today’s Walk
neighborhood garden
featuring lone masked statue
bittersweet relief
®Douillard
Keep it Short: NPM20 Day 12
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Tag Archives: poetry
Blackout Poetry: NPM20 Day 11
Thanks goodness for the National Writing Project…just when my inspiration was beginning to lag and a poem every day started to feel like a chore, this post arrived in my Twitter Feed. Blackout poetry–why hadn’t I thought of that?
So I grabbed the newspaper that arrives only on the weekend and was immediately drawn into an article about the only school in California that has not closed due to the coronavirus. I selected words that drew my attention, not really paying much attention to anything other than the fact that they called to me.
I started to arrange the words, grabbing one here, another there, combining others into phrases until I had a poem in front of me. And then I wondered…had I broken the rules of blackout poetry by rearranged the words rather than taking them in the order they appeared?
So I tried again–this time only using space as my poetic license. I haven’t taken the time to actually black out the rest of the text as I’ve seen done before…and I did doodle a laptop…a connection to the now of schooling with no schools.
So here’s the photo of the blackout process…and both versions of the poetry. Does one speak to you louder than the other? What meaning emerges from these selected words?
Holdout (version 1)
Virus accelerates
U.S. now closed
10,520 schools
shuttered education
disinfected
sanitized
students stay home
Essential
social distancing
tangled clusters
walnut trees
generations
shelter-in-place
Civil War
None of us knows when
school will resume
®Douillard
10,520 Holdout (version 2)
accelerates
stay home
essential schools
students shuttered
Civil War
walnut trees
education
generations
shelter-in-place
virus
disinfected
sanitized
social distancing
tangled clusters
none of us knows when
U.S.
now closed
school will resume
®Douillard
Water Works: NPM20 Day 10
Will it ever stop raining? We have gone from impending drought here in Southern California to several inches over our rainfall average for the year. Today alone we may have gotten more rain than we often get in months!
The downside of the nonstop rain is that feeling of being cooped up in the house. We’ve had no real breaks in the rain today…so I finally decided I would walk, rain or not. I got into my raincoat, grabbed my (mostly neglected) umbrella and headed out. The skies opened up about halfway through my walk. I pulled up my hood and popped the umbrella and forged forward. The walk was just what I need…
So today I offer a water poem.
Water Works
In this place
where skies
are desert dry
and sapphire blue
water pours
rushing down streets
pooling on lawns
snails skate
down sidewalks
worms
rise up
birds duck and cover
and I walk
soaking up
sky tears
breathing in
water-saturated
air
fully submerged
in today’s
water works
®Douillard
Notice the Mundane: NPM20 Day 9
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
Raindrop Rooms: NPM20 Day 8
In these parts we’re known for being fickle about the weather. We want some–until we have it–and then we complain that it arrived. A heavy downpour delayed my walk this morning, but also inspired me later, when the sun peeked from behind the clouds so I could head out into the backyard in search of water drop photos…and a poem.
The mentor poem I left for my students today was Pencils by Barbara Esbensen. We studied this poem earlier in the year and I wrote about it here. And here are some examples of their poems as videos written in October.
Midway through our spring break, I haven’t seen what my students have come up with as they encountered this poem again. But I am looking forward to seeing their writing as their poetic skills continue to evolve.
So with raindrops on my mind, I wrote again with Pencils as my mentor text.
Raindrops
The rooms in a raindrop
are round
filled with reverses
upside downs
mirror image
reflections
of the world outside
In a raindrop
molecules hold hands
gripping tightly
to the moisture within
How do they balance
on the tip of a leaf?
Who wipes their tears
when they fall?
From a drop of water
gardens of color emerge
blossoming into stories
of hope and possibility
Raindrops, teardrops, skydrops
wash down the page
blurring and
brightening
making space
for new beginnings
®Douillard
Quarantine Walk Found Poem: NPM20 Day 7
After being stranded indoors all day yesterday, I couldn’t wait to head out this morning between the raindrops for a neighborhood walk. As I walked I was thinking about the National Writing Project invitation to create a found poem to share this week. Only minutes into my walk I started to notice words and phrases, I collected them via my phone camera and compiled them into a found poem when I arrived home (only slightly dampened by the next round of showers).
When I showed it to my husband, he immediately asked, “How do you read this?” wondering if there was a right order to follow the words. I ask each reader to find their own path, read your own meaning into this text. And maybe, you’ll also consider creating your own found poem (with photos or not).
In the Rain: NPM20 Day 6
Even though today is technically spring break for me and my students, I found evidence of poetry writing in our Google Classroom. I scheduled a mentor poem for each day this week to inspire and support my young poets–all poems we had studied earlier this school year. Today’s poem was The Blue Between by Kristine O’Connell George.
The steady downpour of rain was another influence evident in my poem and my students’ poems. I’m trying to appreciate the much-needed rain and to find ways to make this week feel like a break. Instead I’m feeling cooped up, without the escape of neighborhood walks. I tried to duck out early this morning, thinking I would beat the rain–just to pull the door open to the skies opening up! I rode that stationary bike…but it’s just not the same for me.
For escape, we took a drive up the coast in the pouring rain. The sight of the stormy ocean was a refreshing change from the walls of the house–even if viewed only through the car window.
My poem:
Raindrops
Raindrops fall
dripping dropping
teardrops
across sky cheeks
Gray on gray
blotting out color
a palette
of monochrome
And yet
precious moisture
dampens fire risk
feeds parched
creeks
ponds
rivers
lakes
reservoirs
Look closely at each
raindrop
and find the hope
reflected
inside
®Douillard
And a student poem by E–also inspired by the rain:
Rain
Everyone hates the rain, sulking in their raincoats,
Hiding themselves under their umbrellas.
I see rain differently,
I see the fun between—
The water to run and splash in
The fun trails to dash across,
Arching up across puddles..
The rain dancing down,
Making gallons of fun,
A river of joy,
Slithering around every house.
In those cloudy days,
I see a different scene.
In those rainy times,
I see the fun between.
And by M (not inspired by rain):
The Gaps Between
Many people see one whole
I see the gaps between
The face standing there
with only one eye.
The pigeon flying by
The trees in a band
The concrete is Atlas
holding up the Stones.
Those rough dark places
I see a different picture
I see the gaps between
Looking at Weeds: NPM20 Day 5
Today’s poetry invitation on SDAWPoetry was Wallace Steven’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I realized I’ve been thinking a lot about weeds and wildflowers–especially after the comment from a colleague the other day. He started to direct us into “the weeds of our work,” and then corrected himself to direct us into the wildflowers.
I spent some time wandering around my backyard today. Taking photos of the blossoms that somehow managed to escape my husband’s mowing yesterday. I love the idea that they get down low and avoid the lawnmower–that they are wily and resilient along with their ability to brighten up an otherwise drab space.
So here is today’s poem:
Looking at Weeds
I. They sprout and bloom in
the unlikeliest of places
are they unwanted
simply because they
weren’t planted?
II. Get down low and look close
see the tiny blossom
shaded under the tall stem
of another unplanted sprout
III. Rain and sun
and a bit of neglect
are perfect conditions to bloosom
IV. Perhaps children, too, need a bit
of benign neglect
to blossom
space to grow at will
rather than in straight rows
and in perfectly tended gardens
V. Wind and bees
tend the wild, sending messages
on air current
and hairy legs
spreading, planting, seeding
VI. How do I seed ideas
critical thought
unbridled learning
so that it thrives like
the wildflowers
we so often call weeds?
®Douillard
What I Keep Learning: NPM20 Day 4
This piece in progress was inspired by What I Learned this Week by Angela Narcisco Torres. While it doesn’t yet feel finished to me, it does have some ideas that I am happy to have captured.
What have you been learning as we all do our best to shelter-in-place? Those of you who are teachers, what are you learning as you work to support students through some kind of remote learning?
What I Keep Learning
What matters when your students are names on a screen
Rather than physical beings that you see and interact with each day?
When you hear the echoes of their voices
Through typed comments
That pop up continuously throughout what used to be the school day.
Quiet students are still quiet
Rarely leaving a trail of their thoughts or needs
And body language is no longer
A text to be read
The chatterers still chat
Loud and long, filling my inbox
With every possible question, ‘sup, and emoji
They tap their chat to me, to each other, to themselves
Filling empty ears with imagined sounds of school
Assignments matter now more than ever
I see the ways the mundane
Assignment-for-assignment-sake
Deflates, dissipating energy
Leaving us all unsatisfied and wrung out
Like that washcloth left on the edge of the sink
We need learning opportunities that connect us
Build on experiences and passions
Each student holds close
Allowing ideas to soar and words to take flight
Writing matters, that’s what I keep learning
®Douillard
Free Organic Lemons: NPM20 Day 3
I’ve been writing poetry every day this week. I’ve written with my students, on Zoom calls with my National Writing Project colleagues, and in response to poetry shared on our San Diego Area Writing Project SDAWPoetry padlet.
I try to keep my poetry on the lighter side for sharing with my students, but find myself wallowing in the fear and uncertainty of pandemic living in the spaces where adults are writing. My energy lags at the end of the week, the crush of video conferences building throughout the week, the lack of time for thoughtful lesson planning looking me in the eye as the weekend beckons, and all my other responsibilities slipping and sliding as I keep juggling the balls, trying to keep them all in play.
I’ve discovered that a quick walk down the street is now a necessity, an escape from the never-ending screen time and a welcome break from the hard, wooden kitchen chair that has become my home office/classroom/work space. I’m starting to recognize my neighbors now that I spend so much time at home!
On today’s second jaunt down the hill, we noticed a sign…a sign that provoked a very different poem than the one I had contemplated first thing this morning.
The morning prompt, after some 4×4 breathing, was to take this line for a walk: It is possible that things will not get better…
Free Organic Lemons
It is possible that things will not get better
and then I saw the sign:
Free Organic Lemons
and I read
hope
community
possibilities
When life gives you lemons
lemonade is on the horizon
Look for the signs
®Douillard
Thinking Through My Lens 