Poetry Friday: Shepherd's Purse

Shepherd's Purse

by Paul Perry

In the field - 

shepherd's purse;

 

to be seen even in the dark.

 

Think on it - after the gravel paths, 

after the roads - uneven and achingly long,

across the cold promise the border makes

to a sloping field, to a ditch.

 

...

 

More than that I remember the flat-seed pouch:

 

weed some call it, as if to flourish and seed

in the poorest soil is to be just that.

They are everywhere now - 

it seems to me,

populating my field of vision

like a generative disease, an affliction.

Look:

a man walks into a field.

A field with shepherd's purse.

...

You can read the whole poem here.

 

Shepherd's Purse. (Source: adama.com)

 

In the parts I left out above, something traumatic happens in the middle of the peaceful field full of shepherd's purse.  Paul Perry is from Ireland, but traumatic things happen everywhere, in the middle of peaceful fields and peaceful streets and peaceful lives. I loved the way the poet here puts the emphasis on the traumatic thing and on the peaceful surroundings, both. Both are real. Forever after, seeing the shepherd's purse will bring back the traumatic thing, but that doesn't make the shepherd's purse any less beautiful. (Notice how he dismisses the word "weed.") 

 

I love the way poetry has room for both: the beauty and the pain. 

You should definitely click through and read the whole thing. It's short. Here's the link again.

 

Jan has today's roundup. 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Vaccines

Everybody is talking about vaccines these days. And particularly one vaccine. Are you going to take it? Aren't you? Are you worried about being a guinea pig? After all, we don't really know if it will work, do we?

 

As a child, I was fully vaccinated. Actually I was what you might call fully vaccinated plus. In addition to the regular vaccines everyone got, like Polio (remember the sugar cube?), I also had Yellow Fever and Cholera. That's because I traveled quite a lot as a result of my parents' overseas jobs. 

When my children were small, I knew many people who weren't vaccinating, or were doing a delayed schedule. But we lived in Haiti, a place where childhood diseases can be killers, and my children were fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated plus. You know, Hepatitis A, in addition to the standard Hepatitis B. 

The one I turned down for my children was the BCG, an inoculation against Tuberculosis. That's because I had that one, and then as an adult in the US, had issues when my skin test for TB reacted and the medical types freaked out. Then at the beginning of the pandemic, there was speculation that the BCG might actually be protective against COVID. At that point I really regretted saying no to it for my kids. 

I have many fears, but this vaccine isn't one of them. I will get it the moment the opportunity presents itself, which may not be very soon, since I live in a place where it takes a while to get the latest thing. I'm already rolling up my sleeve.

Poetry Friday: My Whole Soul Is In It

Since I started this blog in 2006, I have posted about two inaugural poems: those recited at both of President Obama's inaugurations. Here, in 2009, I wrote about Elizabeth Alexander's "Praise Song for the Day" and here I reflected more on Elizabeth Alexander and wrote my own poem that was sort of connected to the inauguration. And then here I shared Richard Blanco's "One Today." I didn't post about the 2016 inauguration because there wasn't any poetry performed there. In fact, the only presidents who have ever included poetry in their inaugurations have been Democrats: JFK, Clinton twice, Obama twice, and now Biden. Why don't Republicans do this? I don't know. Here's an article from poets.org about all the inaugural poems in history.

 

I'm positive that I won't be the only one to write about Amanda Gorman's poem today. It was, simply put, amazing. In a day of much to appreciate, Gorman stood out. First of all, she was decades younger than anyone else who spoke at the inauguration itself. Secondly, she wore an arresting yellow coat and red headband. And thirdly, her poem gave me goosebumps, even after I had heard it probably eight times.

 

I decided I must share this poem with my students, and I did that on Thursday. My students don't live in the United States but most of them have been there; some were born there. All are affected by what happens there. Of course, people around the world are affected by US events, but perhaps Haiti is more influenced than some places, for reasons that have to do with history and culture and that I won't go into right now.  

I passed out a transcript of Gorman's presentation (which I found here) and asked the students to underline or highlight lines that they particularly appreciated. ("Or," I added because I didn't start teaching middle school yesterday, "maybe you will hate some lines, and if so, underline those.") It was so fun to watch some students highlight almost the whole poem (for love, not hate) as they listened. My very favorite moment was hearing an eighth grader say, as the video was just beginning, "Wait, she's Black?" YES my dear, she is Black! There is so much power in kids seeing people who look like them up in front of everyone being wonderful. After we watched the video, we shared the lines we had liked, and nobody at all said anything about disliking any of it. 

But Amanda Gorman wasn't the only person who used poetic words. I loved hearing Joe Biden talk about his heart: "Hear us out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart." But it was even better to hear him talk about his soul. My favorite line from his speech was when he talked about Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and saying that if his name went down in history at all, it would be for that document. Lincoln added, "My whole soul is in it." And, said Biden, "My whole soul is in it today, on this January day. My whole soul is in this, bringing American together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face -- anger, resentment and hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness."

Friends, I know he has his work cut out for him. I know the words spoken on Inauguration Day are often poetic, but that the work is full-on prose. But oh, wasn't it wonderful to hear the words, anyway?

 

Because I can't resist, here are a couple more links. Here's Anderson Cooper interviewing Amanda Gorman (and telling her she's awesome). Here's a transcript of President Biden's speech.  

 

And here are a few of my favorite lines from Gorman's poem:

 

And yet the dawn is ours

before we knew it

...

a nation that isn't broken

but simply unfinished

 ...

We are striving...

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

but what stands before us

...

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

...

Scripture tells us to envision

that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

And no one shall make them afraid

...

It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it's the past we step into

and how we repair it

...

So while once we asked,

how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

Now we assert

How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

...

we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

...

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it

Laura Shovan has today's roundup.

Slice of Life Tuesday: White-necked Crow

During my free period on Friday, I was trying to get in a little birding. I was over by the elementary building with my binoculars when one of the elementary teachers walked by and narrowed her eyes at me. "Were you here yesterday?" she asked. "Because there was this huge black bird out here in the tree, squawking, the whole afternoon, and it was so loud!"

Something about her manner suggested that she blamed me, as the resident bird-lover, for inviting the White-necked Crow to perform. Because that is what was in that tree, though she didn't seem impressed when I told her. And I don't blame her, because they are very noisy. 

Source: Merlin app

The White-necked Crow, which I saw for the first time a few weeks ago in that very spot, is the Caribbean's largest corvid. You can see photos of it, and listen to how it sounds, here. It has very distinctive red eyes, and it's really big, 17-18 inches long. 

Yesterday morning I went out before school and saw two White-necked Crows in the same tree, cackling away as the day began. I smiled as I looked at them, and I thought about how those distinctive bird sounds will be part of the kids' memories of these days, whether they are fully aware of them or not. 

Reading Update

I've only read three books in the first two weeks of 2021, but one of them was over 900 pages. Here are the first three books of 2021:

 

Book #1 of the year was A Heart So Fierce and Broken, by Brigid Kemmerer. This is the second book in the Cursebreaker series, a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I read the first book at the end of last year, and you can see what I thought of it in this post. The third one in the series is coming out next week!

 

Book #2 was Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell. This is the story of William Shakespeare's marriage and the death of his son Hamnet from the plague, but Shakespeare himself is never named in the story. We meet his wife, Agnes (she's usually called Anne in the information you'll find about Shakespeare's life). Hamnet's death isn't a spoiler because we know it will happen from the beginning. Another interesting fact is that the names Hamnet and Hamlet are basically the same, just two different versions of the same name. This is brilliantly written and has the advantage of being about an epidemic/pandemic.  (You may or may not consider that an advantage.) I really loved this book and highly recommend it.

 

Book #3 was the 900+ page one, Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith, who is really J.K. Rowling. What I love about these Cormoran Strike books is the character development of the ongoing characters, and that is here in spades. I could do without the excess of gore, but this is so meticulously worked out, much more so than most whodunits. You're not asked to take giant leaps of logic, but you see how the detectives find each tiny piece of information that ends up as a solution. In addition, the agency has other cases all the time, and those aren't neglected in the narrative either. This is the fifth in the series. I read books one and two in 2018, the third in 2019, and the fourth later in 2019.

 

Poetry Friday: Earthquake Poems

Tuesday was the eleventh anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. I teach middle schoolers, so this year's students have no memory of what happened. But I remember. 

I'm in a group right now working through the book The Artist's Way. The first chapter is about feeling safe to create. It's so interesting to me that the time when I felt safest to create was also the time when I felt in the most physical danger. It was after the earthquake that I began regularly to share my personal writing, and especially my poems, online. It felt like something I could do to bring Haiti to people's minds when there was so little I could do on the ground. All the fears I'd had before seemed to evaporate. 

Today I'm going to share some of my earthquake poems, as I've done for the past few anniversaries. All the way at the end, you'll find the new poem I wrote this year. 

In April 2010, I posted Earthquake Vocabulary.

In May I posted Morning, about missing my husband while I was in the US and he was still in Haiti doing relief work.

In November I was back in Haiti, still struggling with the emotional aftermath, and I wrote Wave. Later that month I wrote Ordinary, about how much I appreciated the normal day to day aspects of my life after being away from home for so long.

In January 2013, for the third anniversary, I shared This Quilt.

In December 2013, I posted Sounds from this House. This is an example of a poem that I didn't expect to be about the quake at all when I started writing it.

In January 2014, I shared my poem about being evacuated from Haiti after the earthquake, called How to Pack an Evacuation Bag.

In March 2015 I posted Tears.  This one wasn't explicitly about the earthquake, but that's certainly one of the things I do still cry about, even now.

In 2017, I wrote Memento Mori and How Long Healing Takes in Port-au-Prince.

In 2019, I wrote The Last Normal Day.

 

Last year, in 2020, I posted Tenth Anniversary, about a man I read about in a Miami Herald article.

 

This year's poem is called "Eleventh Anniversary." Here it is:

 

Eleventh Anniversary

That night we slept on the ground on the soccer field
It was cold and we were afraid
The ground kept shaking - more than 30 times that night
We heard screaming and crying
We held our children and told them stories
A woman died that night on the soccer field
Her injuries too severe to recover from
That night

Tonight I will sleep in my bed
I will be warm and fear will be easier to dismiss
The ground will not shake (we hope and pray)
Our children will be in their own beds; in their adult minds will be their own stories
I will think of the woman who died on the soccer field that night
And the voices crying, wailing
Again and again
In Kreyol,
“The Lord gave, the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Tonight I will remember

 

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
 

Margaret Simon has today's roundup.

Slice of Life Tuesday: January 12th

Eleven years ago today, on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, I went home after a long day at school. Before I left my classroom, I wrote on the board, "January 13th, 2010."

As I entered through the gates of my yard, at 4:53 PM, the earth shook. I held on to my daughter, saying again and again, "It's OK. It's OK." 

It wasn't OK. Our city was devastated by the earthquake. But we were OK. Our whole family was unhurt. As the days passed, and we learned the extent of the damage, and the number of people who died (we'll never know how many; I wrote about that here), and we heard the stories of what others had gone through, our grief grew and grew. 

Today, eleven years later, I reflect once again that January 12th will never be just another day. It will always require quiet, mourning, feeling the pain again. 

The next time I walked into my classroom to get it ready to teach again, it was six months later. The date I had written, January 13th, was still on the board. (I wrote about this back then, here.) In between, I left the country with my children. In between, I struggled with what had happened. In between, I recognized that the lives of so many had been changed forever. So many had suffered infinitely more than I had. So many had lost everything. 

This is a slice of life, of my life, and of the life of Haiti. For us who were there, and for many who weren't, it's a slice we will never, ever forget.

(You can read in my archives the posts I wrote in January 2010 and in the months after, if you want to know more about how my family experienced those days.)

Poetry Friday: Flourishing Where You Are

 My OLW for the year is FLOURISHING. I posted more about that here.

 

Part of flourishing is being adapted to your environment. One of the things I have been loving about my environment lately has been the birds that live here. Many times recently I have thought of the words, referring to a bird, "He sings each song twice over, / lest you should think he never could recapture / that first fine careless rapture." It's such a perfect description of birdsong and how joyful and abandoned it seems to be. 

I recently went and looked up the poem, and I'd kind of forgotten that the title is "Home Thoughts, From Abroad." Robert Browning wrote it from Italy, in a homesick mood. It's a time when he doesn't feel like he's really flourishing where he is. 

It's easy, when you feel homesick, to romanticize the place you miss. It looks better, brighter, more welcoming, from a distance. In your mind you know that things aren't perfect there, but you'd like to be there anyway. 

I have to say that the US is making it easier lately to live a long way away. Between COVID and the political situation and ... well, Wednesday ... I am quite OK staying where I am. But there are always places and people to miss. Here's the homesick Browning.

Home Thoughts, from Abroad

by Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England,

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England -- now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops -- at the bent spray's edge -- 

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

--Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower!

 

 Song Thrush, from eBird.org

In high school I read a parody of this poem called "Home Truths from Abroad," ending with the couplet "For English spring sets men and women frowning / Despite the rhapsodies of Robert Browning." In other words, springtime in England isn't quite as idyllic as he says. It rains a lot, and it's still very cold. One time I went in the ocean at Weymouth in April, and I thought I would lose my toes, it was so cold! 

Flourishing involves being where you are. Sure, you'll feel homesick sometimes; even if you've never lived anywhere else, you may long for new places. But you have to appreciate the birds and flowers -- the circumstances in general -- where you live. And I do, especially in the winter, when it's breezy and beautiful here, with lows in the upper sixties. That makes it easy to flourish.

Sylvia Vardell has today's roundup here.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: OLW

In 2020, my OLW was HOPE. I reflected on how it went here. To summarize, in spite of everything, this was a great word for the year.

 

This year, I've chosen the word FLOURISHING. 

 

In some versions of the Bible, Psalm 92:14 uses the word "flourishing." Here's the NKJV rendition. Referring to the righteous, the text says, "They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be fresh and flourishing."

 

Other versions replace "flourishing" with "healthy and green," "full of sap and green," even "succulent." (Hmm, maybe I should choose the word "succulent." It just sounds a little too ... fruity.)

 

The fruit connection, plus the etymology of the word itself that suggests flowers, makes me think biologically. I've been studying birds a lot in the past couple of years, and each species has a different set of requirements for it to be able to flourish. Its habitat must be right, and that means planted with the right trees, with the right climactic conditions, with the right food to eat. What causes one species to flourish would kill another.

 

What causes me to flourish, other than God's goodness? Well, it all comes from God's goodness, but I'm also responsible to arrange things in ways that make me flourish. There are going to be times and seasons that are less than optimal. I like to think of myself as a hardy plant that can survive some adversity, kind of like bougainvillea, that does better in drought than it does when the rains are good. (I played some with that idea in my poem "Self-Portrait as Bougainvillea.") I can't expect conditions to be constantly ideal. But I can make sure that I get enough sleep, that I eat right, that I exercise, that I read plenty of books and spend time with people I love and who love me back. I can make sure I am doing activities that make me feel creative. I can drink tea with friends, even if we have to be distanced from each other. (Zoom teatimes are a thing, and I have a long table too, for local friends - we sit at opposite ends of it.) I don't have to put myself continually in situations that I know are not going to be conducive to my flourishing. 

 

I don't want to make it sound as though flourishing means self-indulgence, or as though I will wither up and die if my wishes are crossed. Not at all. But I do a hard job, and I live in a place that can be challenging, and 2020 was only the latest in a series of difficult years. I do need to make sure that what I can control, I do. I am sometimes too invested in my self-concept of being low maintenance, so I put up with things from others that I shouldn't, or I fail to prioritize taking care of myself.

 

I am newly physically healthy, having just been diagnosed with a vitamin deficiency in the summer, and being physically healthy has resulted in being emotionally far brighter than I was. That's one thing that made my thoughts go in the direction of this word. 

But the main thing I have to do in order to flourish, even if the environment isn't ideal and the world news continues to be full of terrible things (which it will), is to remain in the Vine. Jesus used many agricultural metaphors, and one of them is the Vine. In John 15:5 He says, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." Like hope last year, flourishing isn't all, or mostly, about me.

 

I'm looking forward to exploring this word this year. 

 

 

Here are the lyrics to Sandra McCracken's song "Flourishing":

 

Teach me, oh God to follow your decrees
Give me understanding, your word, I wanna keep
Direct me in the path, of your commands
For there I find delight, my will is in your hands

 

 

Turn my heart away from worthless things
Preserve my life, according to your ways
Take away disgrace
You hold me in my place--flourishing

 

 

Fulfill your promise to the ones you love
Within your ways we walk, for your laws are good
Temptation loses pow'r, my soul's revived
In righteousness, oh God, preserve my life

 

 

Turn my heart away from worthless things
Preserve my life, according to your ways
Take away disgrace
You hold me in my place--flourishing

 

This post is linked to the SJT roundup here at Carol Varsalona's blog.

Slice of Life Tuesday: Zooming Again

Yesterday I went back to work, or rather I stayed home to work. We had a Zoom faculty meeting in the morning, and then we worked getting ready to start back to online teaching today. It's supposed to be just a week - we'll see - but it's kind of a letdown after the fun and enthusiasm of the holiday and the new beginning of January 1st. It's just the same now, not a new beginning. Just Zoom and emails and blah.

Poetry Friday: Happy New Year!

Welcome to Poetry Friday and to 2021! I am hosting the roundup today. Leave your links in the comments, and I will round us up the old-fashioned way. Comment moderation is enabled, so don't panic if you don't see your comment right away. I will publish them as fast as I can. 

Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Burning the Old Year" seems the most appropriate thing I can share for this, our first Poetry Friday of 2021. 

Burning the Old Year

Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings, 

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable...

Here's the rest.

 

But most of us would probably be able to identify some things from 2020 that we don't want to burn. In spite of everything, there really were moments of delight, weren't there? As Jane Kenyon puts it, "There's just no accounting for happiness."

 

Happiness

Jane Kenyon

 

There's just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

Here's the rest.

 

Here in Haiti, we have an additional reason to celebrate on the 1st of January. It's Independence Day, commemorating the day in 1804 when Haiti declared its independence from France, having kicked out the slave-owners in the most successful slave rebellion in history. We will be eating pumpkin soup, the traditional festive food for this day. 

 

At the beginning of December, Bon Appétit magazine published a recipe for pumpkin soup. You can see it here, but you'll also see that the magazine changed the name of the soup to remove the word "Haitian," after thousands of Haitians responded overwhelmingly negatively. "Ou pa wont?" said one commenter. Aren't you ashamed? Pumpkin soup isn't something you mess with around here. It was forbidden to the slaves, so it represents freedom; every Haitian cook makes it slightly differently, but no Haitian cook puts spiced nuts in it.  My mouth waters as I write this (on December 30th), anticipating the lovely smell of the fragrant soup rising up through our neighborhood on Friday. Here's a more traditional recipe. We'll also be eating mochi, because of my husband's childhood in Japan. Here's an article about that. I don't know how many people in the world eat both, but I bet you Naomi Osaka does. Like other New Year's foods around the world, these are supposed to confer good fortune on the upcoming 365 days.

 

Pumpkin soup, mochi,

Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day -

Better luck this time.  

Pumpkin Soup (the real thing)

 

Consider responding to one or more of these questions when you leave your link in the comments. What do you want to burn from last year? What unexpected happiness of 2020 will you be holding on to?  And/or, what will you be eating to celebrate the New Year? 

 

Here's wishing for better days in 2021, for you and for the whole world. And here's to poetry, and all its ability to comfort and sustain. 

The Links:

I always think of Margaret Simon's Thursday feature "This Photo Wants to Be a Poem" as a prelude to Poetry Friday. Here's this week's edition.

 

Linda Mitchell is sharing her OLW (One Little Word). I'm loving the fairy-tale quality of Linda's poems lately, and today's is no exception. Head on over and read her word and what she's done with it here. 

 

Tabatha has two quirky poems for us today. The first is "If You've Met One Autistic Person, You've Met One Autistic Person," by Tom Hunley, and the second is "Order on the Phone to a Large Department Store," by Sally Heilbut, who died of COVID this week.  You can read Tabatha's post here.

 

Robyn's share for today is the perfect New Year's choice, and I echo her wishes for 2021. You can read all about that here.  

Michelle Kogan has a new teaching job this year for which she's very thankful, and she also has a wonderful poem full of new things.

Little Willow is also thinking about what's new, with a poem "That New" by Susan Rothbard. This poet is new to me, but I would love to read more of her work. Read "That New" here.

 

The amazing Jone has written a poem in Scottish Gaelic, and made a video of herself reading it. I can't play the video yet, because I'm updating the roundup next to my still-sleeping husband as the sun is just starting to come up outside, but I'll be back later to watch and listen! Jone also shares two postcards from PF writers. You can see all of that at Jone's blog.

 

Linda B. has a poignant, beautiful look back at 2020 called "The Way We Were," with perfectly chosen details that bring back each challenging month. Read it here.

Bridget Magee's post today is all about the number ten. Her blog is ten years old (Happy birthday, Wee Words for Wee Ones!), and to celebrate, she's curating an anthology! Go read the details, and think about what you can contribute.

Now that I'm all caught up on the links that came in last night, I'm off to sit on my front porch and do some New Year's Day birding. I'll be back soon to see what else is in my inbox!

I'm back from birding. What a great haul today! I saw three Mourning Doves, three Palmchats, an American Redstart, and four Bananaquits. I heard a Hispaniolan Woodpecker (and that counts). I was really hoping to start the year well with a Hispaniolan Lizard-cuckoo - and I saw TWO! One had something in his mouth that looked like a piece of straw, so I wondered about nest-building, but when I looked through my binoculars, he was carrying a tiny - and apparently dead - lizard. And so my eBird streak is kept alive. Today is Day 116! (It's a big challenge for me not to add multiple exclamation marks to my comments on my eBird checklists. I don't really have the scientific detachment down yet, and just want to jump up and down!)

 

While I was away from my computer, I also ate the first of today's pumpkin soup. Haitians eat it for breakfast, but since I've already had breakfast, I will eat mine for lunch. I had to eat some, though (and take a picture, of course), so I ladled myself out a little tiny bowl. It was wonderful. 

 

 

Irene Latham is also sharing her OLW, and it's a juicy one! She's going to be writing poems through all four seasons, and we get to read the first one today, a wintry offering, that somehow manages to be warm in spite of the season. Go read it immediately!

 

Myra of Gathering Books is joining us from the United Arab Emirates, and she too has some Naomi Shihab Nye to share today! This one is new to me. It's called Dear Sky. I think this would make a great writing prompt, too!

 

Margaret Simon is eating black-eyed peas this morning in Louisiana, and she's also sharing a breathtaking photo and poem. The poem is called  "Bayou Being Green." She shares the prompt that inspired it, too, plus a place to get more prompts all year. Thanks, Margaret!

 

Tiel Aisha Ansari doesn't participate in Poetry Friday, but I've been a devoted reader of her poetry blog for many years, and I hope she doesn't mind me linking to her New Year's Eve poem, which I think everyone will agree is perfect. Here it is. While you're there, you should check out some more of her beautiful poems.

Laura Purdie Salas shares a stunning Richard Wilbur poem, one I'm going to save to read again and again. "These sudden ends of time must give us pause." Indeed, they must. Laura's post is here.

 

Christie Wyman takes us on a visit to Ponyhenge, an odd local attraction, with a poem and photo which you can look at here. 

Mary Lee has a poem with an intriguing title, "Things I Didn't Know I Loved." Her poem is inspired by two others that she links to. I'm thinking I'm not the only one who will be inspired by this idea to write one on the same topic. There are so many things to love! Thanks, Mary Lee!

 

Carol has a perfect choice for the New Year, "Ring Out, Wild Bells," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I'm saying Amen to the sentiments in the poem and in Carol's post.   

The next link to come in is from another Carol, Carol Labuzzetta. She shares her OLW for 2021, plus a poem that goes with it. You can read her thoughts about that here. 

 

Tanita Davis shares a poem by C.S. Lewis, with perfect advice for the new year ahead: "Often deceived, yet open once again your heart." Here is her post.

 

And it's another Carol! Carol Varsalona has a lovely gallery of images and thoughts including a variety of possible choices for her OLW. Like me, she is waiting until Thursday to write a post about her OLW for the year, and she says she'd better hurry up and pick one! You have some wonderful options, Carol!  

 

Susan Bruck is beginning 2021 with haiku about snow and reflections on loss and the weirdness of this year's holiday season. Happy New Year, Susan!

 

Also thinking about loss is Laura Shovan, who shares "Poem," by Langston Hughes. This is a perfect poem about the blah sadness you feel when you lose a friend. Socially distanced hugs to Laura and everyone who is feeling this way.   

 

Ramona calls her post Poetry Friday (on Saturday), and she shares a poem she wrote in March of 2020, a golden shovel that turned out to be a keystone for Ramona for the rest of the year. Head over and read her poem "Moving Forward."  

The first link in this roundup is to Margaret Simon's weekly feature "This Photo Wants to be a Poem." Well, Fran Haley took this week's photo and ran with it for her Poetry Friday offering. She's written a Spirit's Vessel poem, which is part acrostic, part intricate three stanza six line six syllable creation. Follow the link to read her poem and see what she has done with this prompt and how it relates to her choice of OLW.

Thank you for participating, everyone, whether by sharing poetry or reading it or both. Thank you for filling this first day of the year with poems! Join us again next week, when Sylvia Vardell will be hosting at Poetry for Children. 

Reading Update, Plus What I Read in 2020

I have read 97 books this year, and it's looking as though that will be my total. If I finish another one, I'll add it to the end of this post. 

Here are the last few I finished:

Book #90 of the year was The Drowned Cities, by Paolo Bacigalupi. I read the first book in this series, Ship Breaker, in 2012. I read the third, Tool of War, in 2018. When I first went looking for it, my library didn't have the second book. I'd really recommend reading these in the correct order, but I do love the whole series. It's not at all my usual kind of thing; it's violent and post-apocalyptic. But it's so well done, vividly written, and fascinating. I reflected a bit about this series (or at least the first and the third books) here.

 

Book #91 was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis. I don't need to read this because I practically know it by heart, but I did enjoy reading it again; it had been a few years. 

Book #92 was The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. For the last few years, I have read a play based on this book with my eighth graders. I was quite surprised, rereading this after many years, to see how much the play adds to the original. But the simplicity of the book is its strength.

 

Book #93 was The Beloved Disciple, by Beth Moore. This is a study of John from the Bible.  Moore writes about John as a character in the gospels, an author of the book of John, John 1, 2, and 3, and the book of Revelation, and most of all, what he called himself, "the beloved disciple," or "the disciple Jesus loved." Moore's inimitable style is fully on display here, and if you've ever seen her in person or on video, you will certainly recognize her in her writing. Here's a taste: "What use would God have had for Paul if he had simply turned out to be another James? Another Peter? Another John? His mission was distinct. And so, Beloved, is yours. God knows what He's doing! Trust Him. God is busy making you someone no one else has ever been."

 

Book #94 was I'd Give Anything, by Marisa de los Santos. In this story, Ginny Beale looks back on her high school days and remembers what a daring, carefree person she was back then. Her friends called her Zinny, and she was fearless and inseparable from her best friends. All that changed in one night, and now she hardly recognizes who she has become. Can she figure out what happened? Can she be that old self again? And how can she deal with the current heartaches of her life?

Book #95 was All We Never Knew, by Elena Aitken. Maren thinks her life is perfect, but there's a lot she doesn't know about what's really going on. A lot of events take place in this story that are life-changing for all the worst reasons. Once she finds out all she never knew, nothing is going to be the same.

 

Book #96 was Writers and Lovers, by Lily King. I read King's book Euphoria back in 2015, and found it thought-provoking and fascinating. It was inspired by the life of Margaret Mead. (Unfortunately I didn't write a review of it.) I had tried to read this one before at least once, and given up because I couldn't get into it. I'm glad I tried again. Casey is trying to be a writer, and also trying to have a long-lasting relationship. Both are not coming easily. This book has a lot to say about creativity and writing, about writers and how they respond to one another and to their own success or failure, and about how hard it is to find someone to spend your life with. It's really worth reading.

 

Book #97 may be the last book I finish this year (or will it be? Stay tuned to see if I add any more books at the end!). It was A Curse So Dark and Lonely, by Brigid Kemmerer. This is a Beauty and the Beast story, but there's a lot in it that's unexpected. One really good thing about this YA series is that  Kemmerer is already finished writing it, so you won't be waiting around for a year to read the next one. I've already got the next one downloaded from the library and have started it. That's a pretty good indication of what I thought about the book! (The second book is called A Heart So Fierce and Broken and the third is A Vow So Bold and Deadly, coming out in January 2021.)  

 

Here are the rest of the books I read this year:

Books #1-#8 

Books #9-#14

Books #15-#26 

Books #27-#33

Books #34-#44 

Books #45-#50

Books #51-#57 

Books #58-#63

Books #64-#71

Books #72-#78 

Books #79-#85 

Books #86-#89

And scroll up for #90-#97.

 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Cookie

 

Gingerbread cookie

Leaves reflected in my tea

Peace at year's ending 

Poetry Friday: Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! This is my 50th Poetry Friday post of the year. Except for two weeks in July when I was very sick and then hospitalized, I posted something every Friday of 2020. In 2021 my goal is to post on all 52 Fridays. 

 

Today I'd like to share some seasonal fare.

 

Two of my favorite musicians, Sting and Nichole Nordeman, come together in this song. Well, not literally. Sting doesn't sing in this version of his song "Fragile," but Nichole Nordeman has combined that song with the traditional Christmas piece, "What Child is This?" Enjoy it through this video, where it's paired with art. 

 

I love this because it reminds me of the beautiful doctrine of the Incarnation. That's what Christmas is all about, that Jesus joined us in human flesh, coming as a vulnerable baby.

 

In the same spirit, here's something I wrote this year. For the last several years, I have done a photo-a-day practice during Advent. I've used various prompts, but this year I used these, from Rethink Church. I post a photo and a short meditation each day in response to the prompts. Below is my photo and reflection from December 13th, when the prompt was "Carry."

 

 

 

Advent Photo December 13th: Carry

Tap-taps carry people where they need to go, crammed inside. The joke, and the reality, is that there's always room for one more. Passengers carry whatever they have bought or what they're going to sell, and each person also carries all the weight of life's worries. 

This one says on it, "Exit pour le ciel." Exit for the sky, or heaven. Today's destination is likely to be rather nearer to home. And meanwhile, there's Hebrews 12:14 painted on the top, too, words to live by: "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." 

Everyone carries so much, every day, whether they ride in a tap-tap or an SUV with tinted windows or just walk along, pushing a wheelbarrow. "Anpil pwoblèm," they say, if you take time to talk to them. "Tèt chajé." (Lots of problems - full head.) 

One of my favorite Christmas carols is "O Little Town of Bethlehem," with its line about the "hopes and fears of all the years" being met in its quiet streets the night of Jesus' birth.  And I always think of our own little town. O enormous sprawling city of Port-au-Prince, how noisy we see thee lie, above thy deep and dreamless sleep (or lack of sleep, for the insomniacs among us), the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets (with no EDH [electricity] again) shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years, or even just the hopes and fears of this one day in December, are met in thee tonight. O Lord, show us how to find the everlasting light, not just in heaven but here on earth, not just in the future but today. The light to see the road ahead, and keep going, with everything we're carrying. 

 

 Irene Latham has today's roundup. Merry Christmas, Irene!

Slice of Life Tuesday: Zwazo

I looked up, and there was a bird in the tree. It was big, the size that would normally move the branch, drawing my attention to it. But this bird was absolutely still. Its eyes were closed. It was sleeping. 

Since it was so still, I could examine it closely through my binoculars, and I did. Its face was whiskery. Its beak drooped downwards. "Drooped" seemed a better word to me than "hooked," though that word came to mind too. Its markings reminded me of snakeskin, or bark. The coloring blended right in with the branch where the bird snoozed. Its tail was sort of squared off at the end. I took some pictures with my phone but they were terrible, too far away, useless to show any of the details. I scrolled through the Merlin app looking for pictures that resembled this bird in the least, but I couldn't find any. What on earth was it? 

Two guys saw my husband and me staring up through our binoculars and they came over, eager to help. "Zwazo," one said wisely. Bird. Yup, I knew that already.

We watched the motionless bird for about half an hour, but finally decided we needed to leave. In the car, I scrolled Merlin some more, and then grabbed the book I'd brought with me, Birds of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A friend left it for me when she was evacuated to the US at the beginning of COVID. I opened the book, and there, there was the bird, the exact bird I'd been staring at. There it was, looking at me from the page, because in the picture the birds, male and female, were awake. 

Source: Birds of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, by Latta, plate 32

 

 

 

The book calls it the Hispaniolan Nightjar. Merlin (where I did finally see some photos, though the photos weren't as perfect as the drawing) called it the Greater Antillean Nightjar. It's nocturnal, and during the day they sleep on the ground or on a tree branch. You don't see them very often. The book and app described it better than I had. "Sometimes called 'goatsuckers,' from the ancient myth that at night these birds use their gaping mouths to rob goats of their milk, causing the udders to dry up and the animals to go blind" (book). "Note white-tipped outer tail feathers, silvery moustache and eyebrow, and pale-spotted belly" (app). "The birds use their huge, bristled mouths to engulf nocturnal insects on the wing" (book). I listened to the song on the app, and concluded that I'd probably think it was a frog or an insect if I heard it. The book described the sound as a "plaintive, frequently repeated pi-tan-guaaaa, reflecting its local name." The Spanish name in the Dominican Republic is Pitanguá, and here in Haiti they call it Petonvwa Peyi, or, in the far more likely event that you ask people who never saw one before, Zwazo. Bird.

 

I keep thinking about that bird, the odds against me looking up into that tree at that branch, the much greater likelihood that I'd walk by without seeing it. I think about that book, newly mine because my friend moved away. I think about the way I'm birdwatching and writing my way into making sense of the events of this year. The way the birds were always there, before I started paying attention to them, and go on, unaffected by COVID and all human worries. The way my husband takes an interest in the birds purely because I'm interested, looks through my old binoculars while I use the upgraded ones he bought me for my birthday. The way my knowledge expanded a little bit as I identified that bird and added it to my life list. Greater Antillean Nightjar. 

Poetry Friday: Possibility

I was looking through my file of what I've written this year, and I found a poem I didn't even remember. When I investigated further, I found I wrote it in June and sent it to Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect for the Summer Poetry Swap. I also sent her my 2019 version, written when I chose the word Possibility for that year. So here are both the poems, plus a link to Emily Dickinson's original at the end.

 

Possibility

I dwell in Possibility —
I peer out of my Gate
And wonder what Surprises
And Happiness await.

Perhaps a new Adventure
Is just around the Bend
Or maybe just a little Walk
With a familiar Friend.

I’m off to gather Paradise
And bring an Armload Home —
I’ll spread it out upon the Floor
To make the Evening bloom.

 

 Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

 

 

Possibility, 2020

We dwell in Possibility —
Though locked inside at Home.
Outside, there’s only Danger,
It does not do to roam.

Sometimes, all masked and careful
We venture to those Lands,
Then once again retreat inside,
Zealously wash our Hands.

For now we try to gather
Our Paradise from here
And sort it from our Gatherings
When it is mixed with Fear.

Yet Possibility awaits,
A brighter future Time,
A World still there, outside the Gates,
More Hills still left to climb.

 

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's the Emily Dickinson poem that started it all.

Michelle Kogan has today's roundup.

 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Purple Flower

Every day when I arrive at work, right after I get my temperature taken and right before I turn my masked face towards my classroom, I see the Mexican petunias. They're not a fancy flower, and in fact in some places they are considered an invasive weed. But I love the crayon-bright purple of their petals. I've taken so many pictures of them, just because of the jolt of happiness they give me in that moment. They are wearing the liturgical color of the season, and surely even without Christmas visitors or crowded parties, their hopeful promise will be fulfilled.

Morning flower face

Bright in the grey parking lot

Purple for Advent

Reading Update

Here's what I've been reading:

 

Book #86 of the year was Mildred D. Taylor's Let the Circle Be Unbroken. This is the sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I recently read with my seventh graders. The kids wanted to know what would happen to T.J., and I found out the answer to that question early in this book. Sigh. Nothing good. Again, this book is a dramatization of what it was like to live in the Jim Crow south. Tough but beautiful reading.

Book #87 was Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson. It's the story of Frannie, who reads Emily Dickinson in school and learns about "the thing with feathers" through various experiences of her life. 

Book #88 was Lily's Crossing, by Patricia Reilly Giff. Set in the summer of 1944, it's about Lily and her new friend Albert, a refugee from Hungary, and the way the two of them experience the repercussions of World War II.

 

Book #89 was Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan, the amazing story of George Washington Black, who begins his life as a slave in Barbados, and will end up - where and how? Just about anything could happen in this book, in spite of the brutal, confined future that seems all the world has to offer to someone like him in the 1830s. This is one of the best books I've read this year.

Poetry Friday: Snow

Toto Sukiyabashi by Hiroshige, 1858

When December came, we switched the "Vintage Japanese Prints" calendar to this picture. (I never did find out who bought this calendar. It came in the mail, with no note. Thanks, if it was you! We have really enjoyed it!) This is the only snow we have around our house, here in the Caribbean, but fortunately we have friends and family in northern climes who send us photos, and in today's post I've used some of those photos to turn into poems. You may notice that a couple of my haiku include the transition between seasons, a traditional theme of haiku poetry. When I was looking for a link about this, I found this fascinating article about how climate change is affecting haiku: here.  (Stay tuned at the end for an update on teaching odes in eighth grade.)

 

 

Scene framed by branches
Snow layered on leaves still green
Road to adventure

 

Autumn’s leftovers,
Brown cornstalks line snowy paths,
Reach for pastel sky.

Flakes swirl down on fence,
Trampoline, trees, wires, and yards,
Snow swallows it all.

Gentlemen of snow,
Swathed in latest scarf fashions,
Chic carrot noses.

December

What can you say about the snow?
Certainly nothing new,
since snow’s been falling forever,
and words like blanket and coat are overused,
suggesting ways to keep warm
instead of layers of freezing wetness.
All the particularities vanish
and there’s white everywhere,
a colorless ground with the pale blue overhead.
At least, that’s how I remember it,
looking at pictures here in a place
where cold is more of a concept
than an actual felt sensation,
except when
I wake up shivering in the night
and turn off the fan.

 

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

 

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about sharing odes with my eighth graders, something I usually do at Thanksgiving time. Now that we're back at in-person school five days a week, I decided to take a little step back into Writer's Workshop, so I asked the kids to write an ode, choosing any topic they'd like. On Friday, when they were due, I gave them a chance to share. I had picked some of Neruda's work, plus some of my own, in case nobody wanted to share theirs, but almost everyone either got up and read their own, or had me or a classmate read it. This assignment really caught their imagination, and I loved what they wrote. One student wrote two. And the student who wrote about COVID-19? I made sure to praise him loudly and publicly for "subverting the genre."

So here are their topics:

 

Brownies
French fries
Mango
Bed
Telephone
Life
Soccer
Wattpad
M&Ms
Besties
Canada Dry
Air conditioner
COVID-19
Mom
Anime
Apple pie
Naruto
Chocolate

 

Buffy has this week's roundup.

 

(Credit for snow photos: JD, JD, PD, CMB, LFB)

Slice of Life Tuesday: Streak

Today makes Day 92 of my eBird checklist streak. That means that I have posted at least one birding checklist per day for more than three months. 

 

I find the streak concept extremely helpful, and apparently I'm not alone. I found loads of articles explaining how effective this tool is to help people make and keep good habits. It's very simple: you do something every day, and keep track of how many days you've gone without missing. As the number gets larger and larger, you are more and more motivated to keep going, so you won't have to reset to zero and start again. There are many apps that have this feature.

Here's to my checklist streak! Long may it last! 

 

Streaks of things we want to do can help outweigh the streaks of things we'd rather not. How many days in a row have I had my temperature taken, arriving at work? How many days have I taught in a mask or face shield? How many days have I added the duty of saying multiple times per period, "Put your mask all the way over your nose, please," to the crowd control duties I already had?

I don't know. But I know this is Day 92 of looking at birds.