Monthly Archives: February 2026

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PF: For Sullivan

Susan Thomsen is hosting Poetry Friday today at her blog, Chicken Spaghetti. I took her up on her invitation to join her in writing in response to Walt Whitman’s line, “I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

For Sullivan on the day of his birth

This morning I await
your mother’s and father’s
texted updates.
I check my phone again
and again
and wonder at this world
expanding
as we wait for you.

You should know now
and it will forever
be true
that I will always stop
anywhere
anytime
and wait for you.

©Molly Hogan

Our first grandchild was born this past Sunday, February 15th. He weighed a bouncing 9 lbs 3 oz and measured 24″ long! You’ll have to take my word for it that he’s the cutest guy ever!

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Just a small moment

There’s nothing like a morning walk to loosen all that has become tangled and taut. I took this picture back in December, on a morning of wandering wide swathes of open beach. I reveled in the sights and sounds as the sun rose and the skies transformed again and again. It was a day when I celebrated being small and finding myself lost in the flow of it. By chance, I scrolled past this photo again this week and saw it in a new way.

Above the vast expanse
of sandy beach
clouds gather
like a herd of horses
flick their tails up
into cerulean blue
and gallop along
the horizon

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Robyn Hood Black at Life at the Deckle Edge.

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Feeling small, a different perspective

At the end of the day, S. sat in the corner and cried and cried and cried. She’d begun the day with tears as well, devastated to realize that she’d missed the opportunity to sign up for the Talent Show auditions. “I don’t know what my talent is, ” she sobbed, “but I want to be in the show!”

With some support, she’d managed to reset for much of the day, but despair had descended on her again powerfully as the day ended. She now sat facing the corner, dejection radiating from every line of her body. I’d already checked in with her and tried to help, but small sobs still shook her shoulders.

“S,” I said to her now, “Your mom is here to pick you up. “

“I’m not going!” she wailed.

“S, if you want to be in the Talent Show, you should talk to your mom about it. They have one every year, so you can try again next year.” I suspected this was little comfort, but wasn’t sure what else to say.

“But my mom won’t take us anywhere. My dad has to watch the other kids and he doesn’t want to. He’s just lazy!” she exclaimed. “I wish,” she sobbed, “I just wish I could meet with someone.”

“You want to meet with someone?” I asked, a bit at sea.

“Yes,” she said, vehemently, “I wish I could meet with someone who could invent a time machine. Then I could go back in time and sign up for the auditions.” Tears streamed down her face.

Eventually, I managed to convince S that the best choice right now was to head out to where her mom was waiting for her. I offered her a hug and then helped her gather up her things and get into her coat and out the door.

Soon after she left, a colleague on dismissal duty came to check in and ask if I knew that S. was very upset as she headed out for pick up. I assured her I did, and that I also planned to drop a quick e-mail to her parents.

“I had no idea she even wanted to be in the Talent Show! She never said anything! ” her mom exclaimed when she responded.

Such big feelings in such a little body.

Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post about the value of feeling small (here). This moment reminded me that there are times that feeling small and powerless is really just no fun.

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Poetry Friday is here!

Welcome to Poetry Friday! I’m so glad you’re here! You are invited to the Inlinkz link party! Click here to enter

This month it was my turn to choose the Inklings’ challenge. “Make it easy!” someone pleaded, and I thought I did. But after fiddling around with it, I’m not so sure. I think it’s one of those prompts that sounds easier than it is.

Anyway, the prompt I chose was from Audrey Gidman’s advent prompts (here). She wrote:

“Write a poem after Wendell Berry’s “Like Snow” — word for word. Choose a subject: rain, a butterfly, granite, the ocean, anything. Berry’s poem is three lines long. Break down each line. In line one, replace the word “suppose” with something else: what if; in spite of; imagine etc., replace the pronoun and the verb, replace “snow” with your chosen subject. Do the same with the second and third lines. Be sure to write an epigraph that reads “after Wendell Berry”.” I added that everyone should feel free to interpret the prompt in ways that worked for them, including going rogue and writing to another prompt on the link.

As I intimated above, I found these tricky! Here’s Berry’s inspiring poem:

I definitely worked loosely with the prompt. I wrote quite a few of these and would love to keep fiddling and revising. But, it’s time to post, so here are two for today:

Like Rain
after Wendell Berry

Imagine if we fell together
like spring rain, gently, gently
nourishing everything around us.

©Molly Hogan

Like a bud
after Wendell Berry

Suppose we could still unfurl
like a bud, blossoming, blossoming
after enduring winter’s grip

©Molly Hogan

To see what the other Inklings wrote, click on their links below:

Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Catherine @ Reading to the Core


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A Hard Won Slice

This week feels long and it’s only Tuesday. I told myself I’d write tonight. I still haven’t done so. But, I did enjoy a nice, large glass of red wine. So, that’s a win. And I’m trying to write, which is better than giving up. Right?

I can’t settle on anything to write about, though. Nothing feels right. I’ve already done it, or it’s boring, or I’m boring, or something. So finally, I just gave myself 15 minutes and told myself to do it. Just write about something.

I could write about recess in the winter in Maine. About how we go outside even when the real feel hovers around 10˚F or a bit colder. Maine children know how to dress for the cold. They put on all their layers (which takes an eternity!) and then once we’re outside, quite a few of them surreptitiously remove their coats when teachers aren’t looking. “It’s hot!” they complain as we insist they put on their jackets while we huddle in our full length coats and clutch our electronic hand warmers. The other day some kids found hoarfrost in the playground drain grids. “It looks like snowflakes!” they exclaimed! “They are like little crystals and they melt when I touch them!” It’s gorgeous out there, but the cold can take your breath away. Somedays, no matter how many layers you wear, it seems to take hours to truly feel warm again!

I could write about our current Science unit. About how kids are exclaiming, “Look, Mrs. Hogan! There are geysers coming out of the rocks!” as they observe the volcanic rocks they’ve submitted in water. How they take the hand lenses and wear them like glasses, their little eyes magnified and buggy. How I’ve had several heart to heart talks with students, trying to open their eyes to the depressing reality that “poop”, although hilarious, really is not the best descriptive word choice for the color brown.

Or I could write about a recent day when we’d been mapping and studying the word “other”. We came up with a rhythmic chant to help us remember it–O! T-H-E-R! A little later when I challenged them to write it on their slates, I noticed a student was stuck. I wandered up behind him and started quietly chanting to help him out. Apparently, I was moving about a bit enthusiastically, too. Another student noticed and piped up, “Mrs. Hogan! You’ve got some moves, Girl!” which sent us all off into peals of laughter and a short-lived dance party.

So, there it is. Not really a slice, but a few of them cobbled together. A Frankenstein slice maybe? lol

But, hey, I wrote. So, in my book, that’s a definite win.