Poetry Friday: Let America Be America Again

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed -
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

Here's the rest of this poem, as relevant today as when it was first published in July 1936.

Here's this week's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Pandemic Birding

Next week we're finishing up with school. Every year at this time I am grading huge piles of work and fretting that nobody learned as much as I had hoped. Every year at this time I am convinced I won't finish everything, and this will be the first year in my teaching career when I will not turn in my grades at all and just, I don't know, suffocate under a mound of unevaluated student writing. This year, all that is happening times a million. Of course, this year the writing is all in Google Docs, so the suffocation would be virtual. The perfect end to 2019-2020, when we here in Haiti spent more than fifty percent of our teaching time in lockdown, first for political crisis and then for health crisis.

Meanwhile, on Sunday I wrote this poem.

Palmchat, Source Birdsoftheworld.org

Pandemic Birding, Sunday, May 17th, 2020

Today my brother wrote to tell me
that the nighthawks are back.
A friend texted a description of a bird
and then a photo of a scarlet tanager.
Another sent a video from a walk she took,
in which I could clearly hear woodpeckers.

My online birding group had a Big Day today
and birders all over the world added their finds to a spreadsheet.
It felt good to check for numerical updates on a list
that had nothing to do with sickness and death.
(We were just over a thousand species, last I looked.)

It’s not always easy to know
what to say to each other, these days,
as tragedies mount
and interpretations vary,
but then, we have the birds to report on,
and they’re doing what they’re supposed to,
behaving the way the books and apps predict,
going about their daily routines,
unaffected by human affairs.

I sat and watched palmchats today,
the national bird of the Dominican Republic,
our neighbor to the east.
They were enjoying the fruit
in the ficus tree in my yard.
There weren’t very many other birds out,
maybe because the palmchats were so noisy,
eating and hanging out close to each other,
the way - remember? - people used to.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

You can see more pictures of palmchats, and listen to how they sound, here.

Carol Varsalona has today's roundup, and it looks as though she and I were on the same wavelength, with seeking relief in nature.

Poetry Friday: Store My Soul with Beauty

This poem was in the Academy of American Poets poem-a-day email back in March. I love the idea in it of storing up beauty so that you can experience it later when beauty is scarce.

I wouldn't exactly say beauty is scarce right now - there's still plenty to be found at home if I look closely - but I do miss the variety of beauty I generally get to experience, beauty of plants and people and moments.

The Days to Come
by Medora C. Addison

Now shall I store my soul with silent beauty,
Beauty of drifting clouds and mountain heights,
Beauty of sun-splashed hills and shadowed forests,
Beauty of dawn and dusk and star-swept nights.

Now shall I fill my heart with quiet music,
Song of the wind across the pine-clad hill,
Song of the rain and, fairer than all music,
Call of the thrush when twilight woods are still.

So shall the days to come be filled with beauty,
Bright with the promise caught from eastern skies;
So shall I see the stars when night is darkest,
Still hear the thrush's song when music dies.

I've been thinking a lot about a trip we took in December when my daughter was visiting. We wanted to drive to Jacmel, in the south, because we usually do that for a few days after Christmas, and we missed in 2018 because of political troubles. We didn't want to miss again, even though in 2019 there were still political troubles. We decided to go. And I'm so glad we did! I have been feasting on those beautiful scenes, in memory and photography, during these days of being locked inside my gates.

I'm blessed to have so many trips, conversations, experiences, all in my memory, ready to revisit when I need to.

In 2012 I wrote a post with a similar idea, about Wordsworth and Tintern Abbey and the Kentucky woods. And, in a somewhat related idea, last week I wrote about how good stories help to protect us from times like these.

Jama has this week's roundup.

Poetry Friday: The Trojan Horse

My eighth graders are listening to the story of the Trojan Horse today. Did you know that it isn't even in the Iliad? Most of the details in the story come from the Aeneid. Today's section was about how the Trojans, finally released from the city walls after ten years of fighting, discover the Horse on the beach, and then find Sinon, the spy, hiding in the reeds with his prepared speech to convince them to pull it into the city.

I'd rather teach this wonderful tale in person, but I'm glad for the technology that lets me record it and send it to my kids. There are few better protections against bad times than good stories. 

Here's a slightly later part, from a translation of the Aeneid by David Ferry:

And now the heavens shift and night comes in
And covers with its darkness earth and sky
And the tricks of the Myrmidons. Throughout the city
The Trojans, wearied by joy, lie fast asleep.
And now the Greeks set out from Tenedos,
Their ships proceeding in an ordered line,
Under the friendly light of the silent moon,
Making their way toward the shore they know so well.
And when the royal galley's beacon light
Is lighted, Sinon sees it, and quietly goes,
Protected by malign complicit fates,
And furtively opens up the Horse's flank
And frees the Argive warriors from its womb.
The Horse releases them to the open air,
And joyfully they come out: first come the captains
Thessander, and Sthenelus, and dire Ulysses,
Lowering themselves to the ground by means of a rope,
And Acamas and Thoas, and Pyrrhus, Achilles' son,
And Machaon the prince, and Menelaus,
And Epeus, he, who contrived the wooden horse
That fooled us so. And when they enter the city,
That's deep submerged in wine and unknowing sleep;
They surprise and kill the watch, and open the gates
To welcome in their comrades from the fleet,
Letting them in for what they are going to do.

David Ferry's translation of Virgil (Source)

You can see the perspective; to Aeneas, telling this story later, the Greeks are definitely the bad guys, "protected by malign complicit fates."

Wishing you only benign complicit fates this Poetry Friday. Check out the poetry others are sharing at today's roundup.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Community

Our host for this month, Ramona, asks: "How has this time of COVID-19 strengthened your sense of connection and community?"

I don't know that it has. It's strengthened my awareness of how much I need connection and community, for sure. I miss people, and conversations, more than I can say. I'm thankful for people who love me and whom I love here at home and a safe place to be, but I miss the constant interactions at school, the way my students make me laugh daily, the chance to get out of my own life and my own head. Technology doesn't cut it, partly because it doesn't work well enough to make real-time conversations easy; my internet connection is slow and unreliable (but oh, I'm so thankful for it). We are repeatedly thrown off our connection with our Zoom church; smaller groups are better but still not great. (I keep trying to add a photo to this post, but the connection is too slow today and I'm finally giving up in frustration.)

I am grateful for technology-aided conversations I am able to have: church, a call from a colleague, conversations with my counselor, family Zoom meetings with my parents and siblings and their families, talking with the occasional friend in the States, texting.

I want more.

I am surprised how much I need people. I went into this lockdown after a nine or ten week break from lockdown caused by political problems. I loved every day of getting to teach in my classroom, and I took advantage of every day. And now back to this. I'm starved for people. It stretches bleakly ahead, as here in Haiti we are still early in the whole horrible scenario.

I have nothing helpful or positive to say today, but fortunately I have lots of books, so here's some Walter Brueggemann, from his Collected Sermons:

As I pondered over "deep waters," I heard this other text in which God assures:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Isaiah 43:1b-2a

This promise is that God will come to be in the waters with us, submitting to the chaos, and by submitting, transforming the waters. So we dare imagine that Jesus did not die abandoned on Friday. As he submitted to the sweeping, surging waters, his God and parent were present in the chaos, thereby transforming the waters into a place of rescuing communion. ...

The world now waits to see whether the faithful church can enter its Friday of chaos, enter in hope and resistance, to trust enough to let the threat become the home of rescue. The transformation requires profound faith and high hutzpah. How dare anyone under such threat say in triumph, "It is finished!"? Such nerve called trust causes the waters to recede, and life in all its fruitfulness may begin again, on Friday toward Sunday. (From a sermon preached by Walter Brueggemann on Good Friday, 1992, at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta.)

Check out Ramona's blog to see what others have to say on this subject.

Reading Update

I haven't written a Reading Update since February, so although my lack of focus has slowed down my reading considerably, I still have plenty of books to report.

Book #15 of 2020 was White Rose, by Kip Wilson, a verse novel about a teenager who joins the Resistance against the Nazis during World War II.

Book #16 was a gift from my son for my birthday, 363 Days of Tea, by Ruby Silvious. I loved this book, which consists of photos of a year-long art project in which the author repurposed used tea bags as tiny canvases for her creations. For a look at some of the amazing and beautiful results, check out this gorgeous blog post at Jama's Alphabet Soup. This is where I first learned about the book, and put it on my wishlist, back in 2011.

Book #17 was I'll Be Your Blue Sky, by Maria de los Santos. I remember enjoying this book, but honestly, I don't remember much more than that about it.

Book #18 was Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano. This is about Edward, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. It's the story of how he recovers from this terrible experience.

Book #19 was Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer with extensive experience of the racial injustice inherent in the US system. In this book, Stevenson shows us case after case of people he worked with who ended up on death row. Recommended.

Book #20 was Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney. An author's note tells us that Lillian Boxfish is based on a real person, Margaret Fishback, and her career in advertising beginning in the 30s. I really enjoyed all the details of the time period. The frame of the story is a walk Lillian Boxfish is taking in New York City on New Year's Eve, 1984.

Book #21 was The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris. There's not much I can tell you about the story without giving away the big surprise, so I'll just say I liked this book. I can imagine it getting made into a movie at some point.

Book #22 was The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng. While reading this I learned a lot about Japanese gardens, tea plantations, and the Japanese occupation of Malaysia during the second World War. I found it an absorbing book.

Book #23 was Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell. I am not sure if I bought this for my Kindle because it was on sale at a really low price, or if it was because my daughter, a huge Mary Doria Russell fan, recommended it. Either way, I didn't know what it was about, and almost stopped reading once I realized - would you believe, it begins with the 1918 flu pandemic! In spite of the topic, the book pulled me in, and I ended up enjoying it very much. It includes a trip to Egypt and a chance to get to know T. E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia. But, fair warning, it also includes this passage and others like it: "Without literature as a guide, I expect you think of the flu as a homey, familiar kind of illness, not a horrifying scourge like the black plague or smallpox. You may believe you know what the flu epidemic was like for us. Pray, now, that you never learn how wrong you are."

Book #24 was In Five Years, by Rebecca Serle. I was totally wrong about this book; I thought at first it was a rom-com, due to the beautifully set up premise at the beginning, and what a relief that would be! But no, it's full of grief and trauma, just like all the other books I've been reading lately. In the meantime, there were way more descriptions of what people were wearing than I'm used to.

Book #25 was Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah. Yup, more grief and trauma. I loved that this one was about a long friendship, which I think in many ways is a lot harder to write about than romance.

Book #26 was Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid. Everyone is reading this right now, so I was amazed that it became available so quickly from the library. This book is so full of uncomfortable situations, leaving you feeling off-balance in the very best way. It explores race, prejudice, dating, and childcare, all issues that can lead to rage very quickly. This would be a great book club read. Check out this interview with the author.

I'm in the middle of several other books, so I hope my next reading update will appear a lot more quickly than this one did! 

Poetry Friday: May

May Night Poem
by Sara Teasdale

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing --
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring.

I imagine the spring flowers are out as normal. There aren't actually that many I can see from my yard, but the flowering trees that are visible, like a frangipani and African tulip across the street, are starting to look very lovely. I haven't been out in quite a while. I'm not sure my heart is very fresh and fearless most of the time, but there are moments when it is, and I try to enjoy those moments to the fullest. I'm very grateful for the good health and safety my family is enjoying right now.

Elizabeth Steinglass has today's roundup.

National Poetry Month, Day 30

For today, the last day of April, I have this poem, "The Last Kiss," which I heard on Tracy K. Smith's Showdown podcast back in October. It starts off sadly, but then there's a burst of "Where there's life there's hope" cheer at the end - and that's certainly welcome in these discouraging days.

Last Kiss
by Jane Ebihara

First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those who
count such things say the average person kisses for a total

of two weeks in a lifetime. And you realize that your two weeks
was up some time ago. Suddenly there is kissing everywhere

Here's the rest.

I managed a post each day in April, sharing at least one poem in the middle of all the grimness. And I enjoyed the progress of the Progressive Poem, ending today with Michelle Kogan, who out of nowhere produces a banjo and performs the whole thing! Thanks, friends - let's do it again next year!

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

Just because National Poetry Month is over doesn't mean you should abandon the poetry. Keep reading it; it's good for you! I'll keep posting it on Fridays, and reading it all year long.

National Poetry Month, Day 29

This prose poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil has been open on my desktop since December; it was on the podcast The Showdown.

When I Am Six
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

My mother waters the tomato & pepper plants. I steal drinks from the penny-taste of the garden hose. It's my favorite drink. I am six...

Here's the rest.

When I first heard this poem, I thought it would be a great idea to write a poem about being six (and of course I thought about A.A. Milne and Now We Are Six), and maybe some day I will.

Meanwhile, here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem. Tomorrow will be the last line for this year's poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 28

I already shared a poem this month by Jane Hirshfield (here), but since she just came out with a new book, she gave an interview on NPR a couple of days ago. She shares readers' poems, and it's such a fun four-minute listen. You can find it here. The printed text is different, and includes Hirshfield's poem "Vest," plus a link to her pandemic poem "Today, When I Could Do Nothing," published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 27

I don't know how long this has been open on my desktop. I do know it's the wrong time of year for it, since it's now time for the migration to go the other direction, back north for the hottest time of the year, instead of south like in the poem. But it's still so important that the birds make it, as the poem says, that the natural world continue to function as it should, in this time when it feels as though everything human is falling apart.

Migration
by Bianca Stone

This time of year the birds fly in elegant mobs,
tragic and sinister against gathering clouds.
It always made me sad to see the one trailing at the end, who I thought was
falling behind, tripping like a head of a musical note;
dark dots making swirls over and around the
obscene billboards,
gathering in the empty trees like relentless matching ornaments -

Here's the rest.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 26

I love Iliad and Odyssey inspired poetry, and have shared a lot of it on this blog. This one has been open on my desktop since March 20th last year, when I received it in a daily poem email. I love the way it ties war writing through the ages together. It ends with "We all want the same thing from this world" and then the answer, what that is we all want. (What do we all want? I wonder how many ways we'd answer that question, if we sat and talked about it.)

We Were All Odysseus in Those Days
Amorak Huey

A young man learns to shoot
& dies in the mud
an ocean away from home,
a rifle in his fingers
& the sky dripping
from his heart.

Here's the rest.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 25

Last year during National Poetry Month, I posted this Langston Hughes poem:

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began -
I loved my friend.

Langston Hughes

When I posted it last year, I shared this link from the Paris Review offering this poem as Poetry Rx, and I also shared a story of a student at our school who lost a friend, a story that still makes tears come to my eyes when I remember that day.

This year they've all lost their friends, and so have we all. I know they, and we, are still talking in various ways, but it's not the same, and we all know it. One of my friends, whose loss I was already pre-grieving, as she was supposed to leave Haiti in May, left practically overnight, on a special evacuation flight due to the pandemic. She told me she'd like to stop by to say goodbye. I told her I couldn't let her in, because we have locked down our home for everyone who lives here and couldn't make any exceptions, but that I'd really like to see her. She knocked at the gate, and by the time I got there, she was standing across the street by her car. She'd left a box in front of the gate with some books in it and some weights, leftovers from a 48-hour dash to clean out her house and get rid of everything after ten years here. We yelled our goodbyes. Thankfully the situation was ridiculous enough that it made me laugh and not cry at that point, though I cried about it later.

There are so many ways to lose friends. Whether they choose to go, or it's chosen for them, whether you're the one leaving or the one being left, whether you get to say goodbye properly or not, it just hurts so, so much to lose people. I keep telling myself, "That's it, you're not making any more friends. You just lose them all." But then I keep making more, and I'm right: I lose them all, and if I haven't yet, I will.

But here's something happy, the Progressive Poem.

Amy has today's lines.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

Poetry Friday: National Poetry Month, Day 24

Excuse my tardiness; I've been at a Zoom meeting already today, but I posted my lessons on Google Classroom last night, so I have just a moment here (before I go spend the entire rest of the day in the futile task of trying to lower the total number of messages in my inbox) to post a poem I wrote yesterday. What a privilege to be able to focus on all of these things instead of watching the number of cases of COVID-19 in our dear Haiti climb each day; of course, I'm doing that too, but it's nice to be able to turn away from it to something on which I can have some kind of impact.

So here's my poem from yesterday:


April 23rd, 2020

In my recording for my students
the Trojan princes are bickering as brothers will,
discussing the upcoming war
and how exactly they should proceed

and in the kitchen,
my husband is making coffee,
opening and closing drawers,
taking the whistling kettle off the stove.

Hector is angry because the others are
accusing him of only wanting to fight
because of his wife’s family,
or maybe just for his own glory,
and sister Cassandra is yelling prophecies,
which nobody takes seriously,
and old Antenor warns, from long experience,
that war isn’t a good thing for anyone,
and outside all the Trojans are fixing their armor,
reverberation of hammer on bronze,

and as I explain these events into my phone
for my students,
scattered by pandemic,
and not coming to my classroom today,
my husband pours cereal,
a soft crashing into the bowl,
and makes me a cup of tea,
a clatter of mug and tinkle of spoon,

and there’s a certain sort of pre-disaster chaos
in the morning air,
back then, but now too,
fraught as these dramatic yet ordinary moments inevitably are,
when we’re trying to carry on with life as normal
and we don’t have any idea
what’s coming next.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



After I wrote that poem, I saw this one by Joy Harjo posted on Facebook, and the two seemed to go together quite well, so here's that one too:



Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are bought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.

Here's the rest.


Christie has today's roundup and also the lines for the Progressive Poem. 

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 23, Progressive Poem, and Happy Birthday to Me!

Today it's my turn to offer two lines to continue the Progressive Poem. Christie will choose one of them.

I picked this day, the 23rd, because it's my blog birthday. Today I've been blogging for 14 years. Let there be socially distant partying, and let there be cake!

So here's the poem so far:

Progressive Poem 2020

Sweet violets shimmy, daffodils sway
along the wiregrass path to the lake
I carry a rucksack of tasty cakes
and a banjo passed down from my gram.

I follow the tracks of deer and raccoon
and echo the call of a wandering loon.
A whispering breeze joins in our song
and night melts into a rose gold dawn

Deep into nature's embrace, I fold.
Promise of spring helps shake the cold
hints of sun lightly dapple the trees
calling out the sleepy bees

Leaf-litter crackles...I pause. Twig snaps.
I gasp! Shudder! Breathe out. Relax...
as a whitetail doe comes into view.
She shifts and spotted fawns debut.

We freeze. My green eyes and her brown
Meet and lock. Time slows down.
I scatter the cakes, backing away
Safely exiting this strange ballet.

I continue the path that winds down to the lake.

Julieanne offered me these lines:

"Missing my breakfast for beauty's sake"

and

"A heart filled with an adventurer's ache."

I picked the first, and then I was stuck. So I did what normally do when I'm stuck while writing, whether a poem or really anything else. I went to my five senses. Looking back over the poem, there are plenty of things to see, like violets and daffodils, tracks, and of course the lovely fawns. There are lots of sounds, like the snapping twigs, the banjo (we haven't heard it yet, but it's always a possibility), the breeze. There's a chill in the air to feel. There are those cakes on the ground to taste (though I guess we're not going to get to, since they're on the ground).

See what's missing? We need a smell! So I added one. I'm sorry, Christie, I'm not letting you pick whether to have a smell or not, but you can pick what kind of smell it is!

Option 1: But what's that smell up there ahead?

Option 2: But wait, what's that delicious smell?

I know what I would make the smell be, but I don't know what Christie and all our upcoming contributors will decide to do with it. That's the thing with the Progressive Poem - you do your thing and then you stand back. Take it away, Christie!


1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 22

I looked up today's line(s) first thing in the morning, because tomorrow I have to add mine. In the background all day as I've done my work, I've been thinking about which direction to take the Progressive Poem.

But before I link you to today's lines, here's a poem. It's got landscape, April, isolation...I've read it many times, and I keep finding new things in it.

Body and Soul II
Charles Wright

(for Coleman Hawkins)

The structure of landscape is infinitesimal,
Like the structure of music,
                          seamless, invisible.
Even the rain has larger sutures.
What holds the landscape together, and what
holds music together,
Is faith, it appears - faith of the eye, faith of the ear.
Nothing like that in language,
However, clouds chugging from west to east like blossoms
Blown by the wind.
                  April, and anything's possible.

Here's the rest.   

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

Tune in tomorrow as I add my two lines for Christie to choose from.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 21

This poem by Camille T. Dungy has been open on my desktop for a long time.


Characteristics of Life
by Camille T. Dungy

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News 

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                              speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                              of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

Here's the rest of it.

Fascinated by that poem and this one of Dungy's, I bought her book, Smith Blue, with a birthday gift certificate. It arrived March 12th, and then March 19th our COVID-19 lockdown began. So I'm definitely going to read it, but I haven't yet. I try to write a post about books I get for my birthday - I usually get some - but I just haven't had a chance.

I know I'm not the only one that's having difficulty reading much during this whole strange experience, because I keep seeing other people writing about the same thing. It reminds me, like so much lately, of the earthquake; it was weeks before I could settle down and focus on anything, and then I chose very familiar books to begin with.

It's a time for speaking for the snail, I think, for getting small and quiet and still. Someone wrote an article about how the perfect book to read right now is War and Peace - I read the headline only, so I don't know what the argument is. To me it isn't a moment for sprawling narrative. What do you think?

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem. It's almost my turn; I add my line(s) on Thursday.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all