It’s day 41 of the school year (Who’s counting? lol), and I’m still adjusting to the back-in-school pace. Taking pictures helps me escape from the whirlwind, and calms and centers me. Mostly I’m photographing on the weekends, but sometimes, like with the double rainbow, a photo moment steals into the work week. Sometimes, in a lovely added benefit, the photos themselves serve as a springboard into poems. The first one was inspired by Georgia Heard’s prompt, “If the wind painted the sky, what colors would it choose?”
After a lashing tumult of rain and hail Wind offers Sky an apology
This week has been a doozy. I’m chiming in with a little poem in praise of Autumn, and with thanks to Georgia Heard‘s October prompt calendar for inspiration.
Autumn
If I chose words to hang upon an autumn tree I’d write dazzle tremble release and flutterfall
This month it was my turn to set the Inklings challenge. I suggested that we “write a love note to something or someone or some place.” I shared José A. Alcántara’s Love Note to Silence as a possible mentor, or alternatively, I suggested riffing off of one of Georgia Heard’s June Small Letters calendar prompts.
I recently encountered Alcántara’s poem in an on-line class. The first two stanzas establish the relationship between the poet and silence. Here are the last two stanzas:
But listening to you is like the shore listening to the ocean. I’m swept clean of my detritus, my rotting organic matter, everything tossed there by the rude and the ugly.
Here, let me grab my pen and notebook, my binoculars. Let me slip on my coat and shoes. The sandhill cranes are passing overhead. Let’s go to the fields at the edge of town and make some noise.
Inspired by Alcántara, I considered writing love notes to all sorts of things: paper, grief (really!), the great blue heron, the marsh, hummingbirds, the clock, etc. But I kept coming back to… of all things…chipmunks! They just make me happy. So I went with that.
Love note to a chipmunk
Oh, chipmunk, you harbinger of spring! You’re the racing car of rodents, sleek and striped, you scamper and scurry all rush and hurry as you zip and zoom across and through the tangled garden green or dash into cracks and crevices or scurry up a tree.
You pop up here and there and then appear in yet another spot. Always go, go, going! Until you’re not.
Then you sit in one space with your nuts or fruit or seeds and your clever hands proceed to stuff your face bit by bit by bit until your cheeks are full– stretched beyond belief. You adorable greedy rascal! You’re my dependable comic relief!
How can I not love you? Your acrobatic antics never cease to amuse. Such sassy spunk and acts of derring-do.
Ah, chipmunk, you have a gift for lightness amidst your serious pursuits. An intrepid explorer, you’re bold and brave, finding sustenance and sweetness in every day.
Now that summer’s fading fast away, you’ll soon depart to hibernate beneath the snow, all snug in some cozy cave or den, idling your engine until you can brave the first chilly days of spring.
Then once again, you’ll fling yourself into life with impressive gusto.
And now here’s a little cuteness overload for you from around my home:
As a bonus, I have to include a couple of photos from David Bird, an amazing photographer who has photographed wildlife, including chipmunks, with his own created “Becorns”.
If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this prompt, please check on the links below:
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Margaret Simon at her blog, Reflections on the Teche, where she shares her own love note.
*Please note that there’s a typo in that on line version, but I can’t find it anywhere else. It should read “sandhill cranes” in the fourth stanza, NOT “handheld cranes”!
In her typically generous fashion, Georgia Heard has begun to share monthly writing prompt calendars. For July she created a “Month of Tiny Letters.” Each day offers an invitation to write a tiny letter. Yesterday’s prompt was “Send love to your tired self.”
Dear Tired Self, A nap is a gift – not an indictment.
Lean in. Close your eyes. Let the hammock gently rock you into easy dreams.
Three days. Two naps in the hammock. I’m doing something right!
My class tends to walk in casual straight line. I know they’re supposed to be super straight, (I see a few (or at least one) intense judgy looks). The problem is that I always think of a Georgia Heard poem I once read. The poem, titled Straight Line, begins like this: All the kindergarteners walk to recess and back in a perfectly straight line no words between them. They must stifle their small voices, their laughter, they must stop the little skip in their walk, they must not dance or hop or run or exclaim. They must line up at the water fountain straight, and in perfect form, like the brick wall behind them...
See what I mean? Ever since reading that poem, I’ve cared a little less about how straight my classroom line is. I more suggest a straight line than require one. I mean it’s a goal, because it’s technically a school expectation, but it’s not one I’m too fussed about. I do want the kids to be quiet, because there’s other learning going on around them, but I don’t require military precision in our formation.
Unfortunately, lately we have become a large, amorphous mass, taking up more than our fair amount of hallway space. Reminders haven’t been working. It was time to straighten up our act, so to speak.
So, as we headed out to recess one day last week, I reminded the class that our goal was to walk out to recess in a single file today and to be quiet while doing so. We lined up in the room, and after another reminder, we headed out of the room and into the hallway. The class was doing pretty well. I gave them a thumbs up. One student edged out of line.
“Get back in line, G.” shouted N, another one of my students, who consistently vies for my job. It was not even 10 am and this was the 178th time he’d redirected classmates. Or was it the 179th? It should be noted that he doesn’t mind attempting to redirect me, too, if he thinks I’ve gotten out of line.
I pushed repeat on my regular refrain, “N, you’re responsible for you.” Then in a bid to change things up and maybe add a bit of humor to the mix, added, “That’s my job. That’s why they pay me every two weeks.”
Several of the students looked up at me quizzically. Especially O. He opened his mouth to speak, but I put a finger to my lips as a silent reminder. We kept moving forward, down the hallway and around the corner. Our line was looking pretty good, and it was quiet, too!
“Wait!” O. suddenly burst out, a few steps later, apparently unable to do so any longer. “Do you pay to come here or do they pay you?”
I stopped in my tracks and looked down at him. My brain struggled to make sense of what he’d just said. Clearly, I needed to clarify. “O., are you asking if I pay to come to school and teach or if I get paid?”
O. looked at me earnestly and nodded. A few kids near him nodded, too.
After a speechless moment or two, I asked, “Well, what do you think?”
There was a pause and then C. spoke up. “I think you pay,” he said. A few other students nodded in agreement.
Replay that speechless moment or two.
“Well,” I finally said, as I started to move forward again, “This is my job, and most people get paid to do their jobs, right?”
“Yeah,” O. said somewhat doubtfully, “But you had to pay to apply, right?”
“No, actually I didn’t.”
They looked at me like they didn’t believe me, or like I was the confused one. We’d already clearly lost the battle on a silent walk, and to be honest, I’d contributed to the conversation as much as they had. As I gathered up my spinning thoughts (Are they that confused or do they think they’re that cute?), we continued moving forward.
We were out the door to recess before I could clear my head enough to determine if our line was straight or not. I’m pretty sure we were in a clump again, my straight line ambitions blown to the wind.
This all reminded me of an anecdote my colleague shared last year. She was drinking an iced coffee at recess duty. One of her second grade students approached. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s an iced coffee,” she answered. “I picked it up on the way to work.”
“Oh,” he said. Then, after a brief pause, he asked politely, “So, where do you work?”
Nix the comfort zone 