Some days less is more–and this is one of those days for me. #Verselove suggested a where I’m from poem, but at the end of a long day, a where I’m from Haiku is where I found myself. (Inspired by the black sage in full bloom on campus right now)
Where I’m From
My nose knows black sage
fragrant, earthy purple blooms
marks this place as home
The night sky was the inspiration that Kevin offered the writers at #verselove today. He shared Ada Limon’s poem, In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa and it was the line, “still, there are mysteries below our sky” that caught my attention and sent me to my beloved ocean. I found myself remembering wandering the night beach and oohing and aahing as the waves crashed with the florescent light of bioluminescence, creating a private fireworks show right in the sea.
Rewrite the Ocean
Oceans conjure
sunny skies, umbrella drinks, coconut body oils
and a hint of salt as you lick your upper lip
When the sky drops
and orange and red dances across the horizon
darkness descends
In the black of night
the magic of living chemistry
millions of microscopic creatures
light up the sea
Each crashing wave
a sliver of bioluminescent day
in brilliant greens and turquoises
Night sky rewrites the ocean
slows time with dramatic pauses
as it paints the inky seas
with light
Day is for sunbathers
vacationers
swimmers and beachcombers
Night is for dreamers
igniting wonder
deeper than earth’s vast
waters
I love small poems. Those deceptively simple compositions that are packed with possibilities of layered meaning. I also love that they invite my young students into their mystery.
Today we read 16 Words William Carlos Williams & “The Red Wheelbarrow” by Lisa Rogers & Chuck Groenink and learned about this well-known poet and his famous short poem. We studied The Red Wheelbarrow and students were ready with their noticings. They counted those words carefully–yes there were 16 (at least the way it was written). They noticed the four stanzas and that each stanza had four words. They noticed the color words and felt that the line “glazed with rain water” was a bit metaphorical. (It also brought to mind donuts–got to love the literal interpretations from first graders!)
I handed out post it notes–it worked last week–small paper for small poems. And they set off with a mere five minutes before they needed to head off to their reading groups. We came back to our poems after lunch. Some students wrote several (I have plenty of post-its!) and all wrote at least one.
Here’s the one inspired by donuts
a sweet donut
with raining sprinkles
is waiting for someone
to pick it up
chomp
Many of my students continued to be inspired by sports
balls flying
like blue birds
flying in
the air
flies into a brown
kids glove
And the one I fell in love with (I’m sure I didn’t write like this when I was in first grade!)
little bits
of sky fall
down on my
face giving
it a small
cool nature shower
And my own poem is trying to conjure spring. There are hints here and there, but the pervasive marine layer is back–something that brings out the complaining in us Southern Californians!
spring wildflowers pop
yellow
when the sun
shines
after many rainy
days
my heart sings
joyfully
It’s Earth Day, a perfect day to celebrate the earth and nature and our connections to them. Donnetta at #verselove suggested crafting a poem that honors Mother Earth in some way. Abigail, part of the #writeout team from the National Writing Project shared a recoding of Ada Limon reading the Mary Oliver poem Can You Imagine?
After a day spent with first graders talking and learning about all the reasons and ways we can and should honor and care for our planet, I found myself thinking about the ever-present tall palm tree that has been a constant on our playground for longer than I can remember. This is the tree that inspired my poem for today.
Tree-by-the-Sea
Can you imagine
standing tall and still
a constant
playground companion
for generations of children
Watching wall ball games evolve
casting a skinny shadow
a line of shade
connecting
play and nature and trees and kids and learning
Can you imagine
the stories
our sentinel palm
can tell
of friendships forged
lives linked
in a school-by-the-sea
Toes tucked in deep
green crown with a priceless view
if you listen to the rustle
you might hear your childhood
in the leaves of a tall
tree-by-the-sea
Some prompts are meant to be transformed and that’s what happened with Stacey’s prompt over at #verselove for me today. Her prompt was about memories from mama’s kitchen, but instead I picked up on her “I’ve been writing this since…” line.
When I think of kitchens, I think of my husband. He’s the resident chef in our family and the one who makes food happen for me and our extended family. But I didn’t really write about food or the kitchen, instead that refrain conjured the power of the ordinary and its translation into love.
The Joy of the Ordinary
I’ve been writing this
since the day you walked into my life
making conversation easy for once
as we talked through that entire first evening
everyone and everything disappeared
but you
I’ve been writing this
for decades
through our youth and childrearing
sickness and health
frustration and excitement
boredom and change
learning from each other, with each other
embracing the inevitable messiness that life serves up
I’ve been writing this
as I’ve learned to value the ordinary
daily dependability
Love
I taste in the meals you make day in and day out
Love
I hear in days that start and end with I love you
Love
I smell in freshly mown grass or the flowers you decided I needed just because
Love
I see in your attention to detail about all things family
Love
I feel in the warm hugs that defy distance
packed in a text, a phone call, a note in my lunchbox
a whisper in my ear
I’ll be writing this
forever
spending a lifetime
with you
Today’s #verselove prompt from Susan was about communications. She focused on notes from the past. But with Earth Day on Monday, I am thinking about communications with our planet, with nature–how we can build a symbiosis between humans and our planet.
Prewriting and walking–they go together for me. As I walked the beach today in the cool spring sunshine, poetry began to form. What I haven’t learned yet is how to capture those fleeting thoughts while I am in motion. By the time i get home with my notebook, specifics have flown…I have to reach back in my mind to reconstruct, rethink, revive, and revise the nascent poetics.
Conversation with the Sea
I hear her whisper
hush shush
hush shush
an echo of my own heartbeat
a lullaby
lifting the weariness of the workweek
Shorebirds whistle
collaborators
“on your right” and “I have your back”
singing as they run and fly in unison
Sandy squelches
a give and take of my feet
and the wet sand
we play cat and mouse
who can catch who
Seagulls squawk
complaining
wanting more
impatient
annoyed and annoying
this is our beach
they squawk
She whispers
and I hear history
and her story
hush shush
hush shush
the sound of wombs, of new life
ancients, primordial
salty tears of the planet
Letters in the sand
message in a bottle
whispers and echoes
I’m listening
I’m lucky enough to work at a school that has fruit trees growing throughout our campus. I had noticed the blossoms on the apple trees a couple of weeks ago, but today when I went to pick my students up from PE I had to double back and capture a photo of the explosion of tiny fruit that is now growing.
The #verselove prompt today was a complex one. Stefani introduced an Irish quatrain with both a syllable count and a rhyme scheme. At the end of a long week, I did cheat a bit with my ending!
Fruit babies
scarlet orbs, lunch snack maybe?
will the crows get to them first?
worst!
(case scenario)
Today’s #verselove prompt was offered by Shaun who introduced a Bukowski poem that was all about you taking care of you–or at least that was what I took away from it. It led me to thinking about all the ways we, as teachers, often do not take care of ourselves, which then led me to think about how little things can make a big difference.
So, here goes!
Do it for You
On days that feel like weeks and months
it’s the little things that matter
an early morning walk dodging snails and letting dew drops
give you that magical sparkle
even when it’s hard to get out of bed
a stop by the local coffee shop on the way home
for that expensive coffee (decaf of course)
that transports you to a place that is quiet and calm
and just the right kind of warm, the kind that feels like a hug
go out back and breathe in purple
soft lavender smells that tickles your nose
with memories of summer, of time unstructured
a momentary vacation
Take time
make time
invent time
imagine time
just for you
Do it for you
I’ve been inspired by Grant Snider’s comics for a while now and was super excited when I learned about his book Poetry Comics published at the end of March. (I wrote a mini review here). I knew I would be doing something inspired by his poetry comics with my first grade students this month. When I saw he had done a Haiku comic style, I knew this would be a perfect format for my students.
We’ve written Haiku this year–well, mostly 3-line poems without much attention to the syllable count. So when we took a look at Grant’s Haikomic this morning, students immediately understood (and recognized the metaphorical thinking in his last line).
I’ve learned when teaching first graders that sometimes a novel paper use can propel young writers forward, somehow tricking that treacherous writer’s block into disappearing. So instead of writing in their notebooks or on lined paper, I handed each student a 3″ square post-it note to draft their Haiku. It didn’t take long for students to have their Haiku ready to be transformed by the comic making process.
I distributed the comic paper–in this case, a page with three horizontal rectangular panels. Students wrote one line of their Haiku in each panel and added their comic drawing with colored pencil. As a final last step, they traced over the writing with a Sharpie marker.
Here are a few examples:
V can never help writing about violets!
M is obsessed with basketball!
In her piece, “I” decided to add speech bubbles.
And O celebrated flowers and springtime
While I wrote my Haiku about egrets with my students and drew along with them, later this afternoon with a group of Writing Project colleagues we crafted our Haikomics using photos instead of drawing (mostly due to severe time constraints). I then used Canva to write my Haiku directly onto my photo.
Maybe you’ll want to try your hand at a Haikomic too. I’d love to see what you come up with!
Today Dave over at #verselove introduced me to a new poetry format called Kwansaba. This format depends of sevens: seven lines, each line with seven words, all words seven letters or less, and the poem should be one of praise. (For more details read the #verselove post linked above) Here is my attempt:
Sing a Song of Coffee
Magic morning elixir in my pink cup
portals me from sleep into my day
with smells of earth that ground me
drip drop gurgle, music to my ears
first sip…aah hot dark melted amber
Jolts. Brings energy into clear present focus
never you mind that it is decaf 🙂
Thinking Through My Lens 