Tag Archives: Poetry Friday

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PF: Night at the Museum

It’s been a school year. All 55 days of it. I keep telling myself I’m growing as a teacher. I’m learning a lot. I tell myself that on repeat. (There’s some other looping self-talk going on, too, but I’m not going to share that right now.)

Trying to be proactive, I’ve been adding things to my weeknight schedule, deliberately creating some time out of the vortex of school. I noticed an upcoming event at the Portland Museum of Art and planned to attend, registering for a free one hour ekphrastic poetry class.

I called my daughter, Lydia, and asked if she wanted to meet for dinner and go to the museum beforehand. My husband opted to join us, and I looked forward to the event all week. A little breathing room.

Then I had one of the worst teaching days of my life. Enough said. I was desperate to escape into an evening out; however, by the end of that “terrible, horrible, no good very bad day”, I had no bandwidth for participating in a class. None. The idea of listening to someone talk about, well, anything, and then putting myself out there with some strangers was, in that moment, horrifying. It wasn’t an option.

So, after dinner, we walked over to the museum. I touched base with the volunteer at the desk to free up my space in the class in case someone else wanted to join. I, then, breathed a huge sigh of relief.

While Kurt wandered, Lydia and I decided to check out the erasure poetry center set up in the museum’s Great Hall. They had supplied printed pages and pencils. We reached through the crowded area to the materials, randomly selecting a page each, then settled in to create our poems. Here’s what I came up with:

When A Country Discards Empathy

no hint of human
empty
still and silent
distance visible
dissolving fidelity

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully at her blog, Salt City Verse.

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PF: A different sort of blessing

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spend time with my sister and most of her family. They were meeting up in Boston and we spontaneously decided to join them. We had such a lovely time. Our group went out for a delicious Indian dinner and there was a moment, a small one, overseen, that has stuck with me.

Even though we didn’t say grace before our meal

At the end of the table
at the restaurant
my nieces,
adults now,
smile and chat.

My sister glances at them
then turns to her husband
with a warm smile containing a world
of pregnancies, late nights,
worries and wonders.
So many shared experiences.
He returns her smile. 

The girls tilt back their heads, and
their laughter spills, golden,
into the night air.
Rising
like a blessing.

©Molly Hogan, draft

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Carol at her blog, The Apples in My Orchard.

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PF: Image Poems

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

©Molly Hogan

Autumn Striptease

brazen tree
shimmies in the breeze
preparing to shift and drop
her scarlet veil of leaves
one
by
one

a tantalizing
slow motion release

until her limbs
lay bare
for all to see

©Molly Hogan

I hope that fall is offering you beautiful moments as well, and some time to enjoy them.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round up is hosted by Jone Rush McCulloch.

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Flurry, Float and Fly! The Story of a Snowstorm

I was delighted to have a chance to share Laura Purdie Salas’s upcoming “Flurry, Float and Fly! The Story of a Snowstorm” with my second grade students recently. As Maine residents, we’re all well-versed in snow, so would they be the perfect audience for a snowy book or a snow-jaded lot?

As we settled in to read, the book quickly grabbed their attention. It is a gorgeous match between words and images. The rhyming was so well-crafted, that it took them a while to notice it, and they were delighted when they did. It really is masterfully done! Here’s the jet stream described oh-so-efficiently and oh-so-poetically:
“From the north,
a polar freeze…

from the south,
a humid breeze…

All winds advance.
The mix and dance. “

The kids oohed and aahed over several of the spreads, including this one:

illustration by Chiara Fedele

“The words go down, down, down….Just like snow!” one student gushed. On another spread, they loved how Laura spaced her words across the page and greatly admired her use of ellipses ( a favorite second grade form of punctuation!). On other pages students noticed how Laura used larger font and capitals to make words pop out. By the end of the book, my students were chanting along with the refrain, “flurry, float and fly.”

As we discussed the book, they asked me to turn back to this next page again and again. It captures the magic of early morning snow and the arrangement of words and those lovely ellipses invite you to linger…to slow down and just take it all in.

As a bonus, there are several pages of back matter to dig into. In them, the science of snow is beautifully and clearly articulated, with explanations of the jet stream and snowflake formation and well-chosen illustrations. We didn’t have a chance to dig into these pages yet, but I’m already thinking how I will use them to model some powerful non-fiction reading and thinking.

Most of all, my students fell into the wonder of the book and its snowstorm. As Laura noted, “I know that science underpins its beauty, but it’s still magic, falling silently, gracefully, from the sky.” My students agreed, and there wasn’t a jaded one among them! Laura’s words and Chiara’s illustrations wove a spell of a beautiful snowfall on a very warm fall day. My active semi-chaotic class was lulled by Laura and Chiara’s collaboration into a temporarily peaceful state.

Perhaps I’ll read it again tomorrow!

Note: It’s due for release on November 11th, so you will also have the chance to enjoy it soon!

An additional side note: If you haven’t ever had a chance to read Laura’s book, Finding Family: The Duckling Raised by Loons, I highly recommend that you do! Published in 2023, it’s already become a a must read in my classroom. Kids are fascinated by the story and it sparks some wonderful discussions about family.

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Sarah Grace Tuttle!

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PF: Autumn

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

and be thankful
for them all

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Linda Baie at her blog, Teacher Dance.

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PF: Hope

This month Margaret posed our Inklings challenge. She matched us up with partners and instructed us to send images to each other and write a poem sparked by the image we received. Catherine Flynn was my partner and she sent me three photos to choose between. I struggled to chose which picture to use, but kept coming back to this one:

Hope
is a cluster of eggs
nestled together.
Exquisite promise
cradled
in the terrifying fragility
of three thin shells.

©Molly Hogan

If you’d like to see what others in the group did with their photo prompts, click on the links below:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Matt Forrest Esenwine at his blog, Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.

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PF: Image Poems

These days, as our country mutates into something foul and ignoble, I turn to Nature again and again to find solace. Sometimes I feel almost desperate in my search for a peaceful distraction. It reminds me of the fledglings I see at our feeders in the spring, fluttering their wings insistently in a drumbeat of demand. “Feed me! Feed me!” they insist, over and over again, as the adult birds patiently tend to them. Somedays, I feel like I owe Mother Nature a big apology for my ongoing neediness. She definitely has my gratitude.

These days, I’ve also been rereading Wendell Berry’s well-known “The Peace of Wild Things.” It’s a poem I’ve turned to again and again over the years. It begins

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things…

I’m so grateful to live in a place where I’m surrounded by beauty. I’m so grateful to be a part of supportive communities.

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Rose Cappelli at her blog, Imagine the Possibilities. This community is another place where you can find solace.

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PF: A Love Note

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.

You can read the whole poem ( here).*

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.

Oh, sweet chipmunk,
I’ll be waiting for you.

©Molly Hogan, draft

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:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Mary Lee is busy gallivanting around the globe this week.

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”!

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PF: Hummingbird

We always look forward to the hummingbirds’ arrival in the spring. Some years they arrive, and then are scarcely seen as summer commences and flowers bloom, offering plenty of food in the wild. This year they have been present all summer, feeding from our feeder and garden blossoms. I usually have at least two or three of them whizzing about the garden, chittering and darting. Sometimes they show off their undulating “U” dance, which is always a delight. They also frequently perch in our birch tree, on our weather stick, or amidst the wisteria vines. I never tire of watching them and am always fascinated by how their colors change depending on the light. They are truly a gift of the season.

hummingbird

with her needle beak
and darting flight
summer seamstress
stitches together
all the sweetness
of the season

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Heidi Mordhorst at her blog, My Juicy Little Universe. Be sure to stop by and sip up some poetry!

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PF: The Roundup is here!

Welcome! I’m delighted to be hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week!

After a few years of exciting travel and busy summers, and a hectic start to this one, I’m now enjoying a slow-flowing summer. I’m embracing and embodying words like putter, meander, wander, roam. I’ve done more than my fair share of digressing and side-tracking. And then there’s that delightful French verb, flâner, which means, essentially, to wander about with an engaged and inquisitive eye, but no destination in mind. I like to think of it as being open to everything, but with no agenda. Now, that’s a summer plan!

One of my favorite things to do this summer has been to follow the pollinators around my gardens and take pictures. It’s made for a lovely pace.

As the calendar flipped to August this week, I started thinking even more about pace. I confess, I have a propensity to hurry and rush. Too often I let the pace rev up to frantic, especially once the school year starts. I’m not sure how to stop this from happening (yet!). As I’ve been thinking about all the impending rush and scurry, this poem has been in my mind.

Hurry
by Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   
and the gas station and the green market and   
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   
as she runs along two or three steps behind me   
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?  
(To read the the remainder of the poem, click here.)

Those first two lines of the second stanza are playing on repeat in my mind: “Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?/ To mine?”

So, I’m deliberately pushing pause while I can. Avoiding making too many plans. Cancelling or reorganizing them when I realize I have done so. I’ve taken more and longer naps this summer than I have in my entire life, and I’ll try to tuck in a few more. (The hammock and I have become good friends.) These days, when I think of running errands, I’m pausing to ask myself, “Do I want to do this right now? Do I need to do this right now?” More often than not, the answer to both of those question is: I don’t. It can wait.

Today as I lay in the hammock, I hear the bees buzzing about the hosta blossoms. I hear their sound ebb and flow, muffled by petals as they enter each soft chamber. My eyes trace the undulating path of a swallowtail butterfly. A pileated woodpecker swoops directly overhead to land momentarily on an adjacent tree. I watch it move up and down, hear it’s beak thunk into the trunk of wood, see it’s wings unfold as it flies away and listen to its ululating cry. I watch the shadows shape shift in the leafy canopy. I close my eyes and try to imprint the moment.

Summer is ending… but it has not yet ended.

Summer Mantra

May I be present in moment’s glow,
resist directing its ebb and flow,

relax into the day’s embrace,
let buzzing bees decide my pace.

May my eyes drift with monarch’s flight
and revel in day’s changing light.

May I gauge time by shadow’s reach
or tidal rhythms at the beach.

While clocks and phones sit idly by,
may I unwind with heartfelt sigh,

and coalesce with present space.
The gift of now can’t be replaced.

©Molly Hogan

And now I find myself humming this song…

“Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me….” Ahhhhhh…

Wishing you a wonderful late summer and sweet, smooth, flowing days. Please add your link below to join this week’s Roundup.

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