It’s Poetry Friday and I hope everyone is well. Thank you Heidi Mordhorst for hosting. I found her list of “Quarantine Questions”from last week’s Poetry Friday a useful way to approach each day. So thank you, Heidi, for that.
“What am I grateful for today?” is the first question on Heidi’s list of Quarantine questions. Today, that answer was easy. I’m grateful that my family is well.
Two days ago, my son, Phil, who lives in Manhattan, called to say he developed a fever, some chest congestion. He rarely gets sick. My husband and I stayed calm but were horrified, imagining he’d get sicker, even though our son is young and healthy. But, of course, that’s no guarantee. Hearing my son had such symptoms was the first time I felt this pandemic in such a scary way.
Fortunately, the following day, which was April first, and coincidentally Phil’s birthday, he felt better and the next day better still. I have to assume he had a mild case of Covid 19; it’s not easy to find out for sure. But it seems he’ll be fine.
I attended to the other things further down on Heidi’s Quarantine Questions list such as exercising, keeping in touch with friends, and trying to create something in spite of the distractions. I made broccoli soup and planned an apple cake for later.
Then, along my driveway, I encountered another first. My first daffodil was in early bloom and it inspired this short poem.
THE FIRST DAFFODIL
Ten others will come, buttery yellow, faces krinkled and new, gregarious fellows.
But one arrived early, for the week or two stay, and saved me from waiting one more lonely day.
It’s time for another Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tabetha Yeats. Thank you, Tabetha for hosting.
This week I want to touch on something that is close to my heart, and that is the profession of nursing. My mother, Betty Scully, was a nurse who trained in Binghampton City Hospital during World War II while my father was overseas. Though she left nursing to raise children and work in our family’s restaurant, she was always a nurse, ready to cure my frequent bouts of Strep throat (and cause a little dread) with her glass syringe and penicillin. She’d give neighbors their prescribed injections, such as vitamin B12, in our restaurant kitchen where she alway wore white nurses’ shoes. Her nursing skills gave my mother, in my eyes, a certain power.
Betty Scully early 1940’s
During this Covid 19 epidemic, I admire and am so grateful for all nurses, especially those on the front lines. Nursing is more technical and of course different than it was for Clara Barton, who nursed soldiers during the Civil War, before ICU’s, drugs and electronic medical records. But nursing’s ultimate mission is unchanged: to heal and comfort the sick.
Clara Barton
This poem by Rosemary and Steven Vincent Benet from “A BOOK OF AMERICANS,” a book for young readers, celebrates Clara Barton:
Clara Barton
by Rosemary and Steven Vincent Benet
Brave Clara Barton
Stood beside her door,
And watch young soldiers
March away to war.
"The flags are very fine," she said,
"The drums and trumpets thrilling,
But what about the wounds
When the guns start killing?"
Clara Barton went to work
To help keep men alive,
And never got a moment's rest
Till eighteen-sixty-five.
She washed and she bandaged,
She shooed away the flies,
She hurried in nurses,
She begged for supplies.
Read the rest here
I’m also an admirer of Florence Nightingale, who was an indefatigable bedside nurse, but also a statistician, scientist and fighter for public health. She came from a wealthy family and dismayed her mother with her determination to be a lowly nurse or any career at all. But she would confront any obstacle to become a nurse.
When the British military doctors plunged into the war against the Russians in Crimea in 1850, they didn’t prepare adequately for war injuries. They also never considered the infectious diseases that soldiers, weakened by poor food, poor shelter and bad water, would encounter. From the beginning, military leaders resented bitterly her interfering in the health care of soldiers. Still, she persisted, determined to do her part to help.
Florence Nightingale spent several years with a crew of nurses in Crimea stuffing mattresses, making beef tea, and keeping notes, collecting public health data. Then, she returned to England with her knowledge of sanitation and health and improved the hospitals at home. She made a such a difference that she became the second most popular woman in England after Queen Victoria, so popular that the men who ran the government and were loath to listen to her, had to. She improved not only England’s hospitals but the sewers, too. She was a public health pioneer. Her sister wrote of her, “She is ambitious–very, and would like . . . to regenerate the world.”
Florence Nightingale
Today we sense tension between public health experts and the government. When we hear some of our leaders denying inconvenient facts, one only has to think about the lessons learned from luminaries such as Florence Nightingale. Here’s my brief impromptu tribute to her:
From Crimea to England: Florence Nightingale
Dig wells for clean water.
Insulate cold huts.
Fresh meat, no more gristle,
bandage all cuts.
Soldiers died of disease,
much less from the guns.
She collected the data,
her life's work begun.
A one woman think tank,
back home she would start
to improve England's health
with her numbers and smarts.
Happy Poetry Friday! It’s helpful to the spirit to share poems at a time like this.
Michele Kogan is our host today so stop by her website. You will find not only wonderful spring poetry from the recent issue of Michele Heinrich Barnes’ Today’s Little Ditty, but also Michele Kogan’s paintings full of flowers that are sure to take the sting out of current times.
I love daffodils. Many do, of course. In the early 19th century, William Wordsworth took a walk with his sister in England’s Lake District. There, he was inspired by Wild Daffodils to write one of the most well known poems about this stunning yellow flower ever written in the English language.
I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD
by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
(Read entire poem here)
But even though I love daffodils, I found that I actually didn’t know any facts about them. The scientific name for the wild daffodil is Narcissus Pseudonarcissus. I grows from a bulb but I was unaware that the flower made seeds that can produce a flowering plant within a decade.
Narcissus Pseudonarcissus or Wild Daffodil
I also didn’t know that the bulb and leaves happen to be poisonous. They contain the alkaloid lycorine which causes nausea and GI distress. According to a BBC report a class of 30 primary school children learned this first hand while they made vegetable soup as a class project. Because a daffodil bulb was mistaken for an onion, 12 kids were sent to the hospital. But the story ended happily. None were seriously ill.
The freedom I feel walking outside is irresistable, especially now. Today I spied daffodils breaking the soil.
Daffodils are ubiquitous here in Upstate New York. That’s because deer do not eat them (because their poisonous?) and with so many deer sharing our space, most gardeners plant flowers that won’t tempt them.
It takes some chutzpah, I think, to break through the soil not knowing what waits on the other side. Today it was clear skies for these dependable, brave, yearly visitors to our world.
Though blind, green shoots crack
muddy soil--What's ahead
courageous flower?
I hope everyone can get outside in a safe place and enjoy the weekend. Thank you Michelle Kogan for hosting!
It’s another Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio Rhythm and Rhyme. Thank you, Matt, for hosting!
I hope everyone in the poetry universe is healthy and well. I am supposed to attend a Highlights poetry workshop in a week, led by Gail Carson Levine. Only ten people have signed up and I suspect that it will not be cancelled, but who knows? I have been so looking forward to it. Fingers crossed. It’s an uncertain time, for sure.
Meanwhile I have a short post for this week. I’ve spent way too much time with the news, thinking about my sister in California and my son in New York City.
My oldest son, Philip, was supposed to be born on April 4th. But I never made it, and he was born early on April Fool’s Day, which he found to be a delightful birthday. Maybe that’s why he was blessed with a good sense of humor. Anyway, since it will be April soon, I will celebrate him by posting a self portrait he painted in fourth grade and a poem I wrote inspired by it. Of course, being Phil’s Mom I hardly look at the painting with objective eyes, but I’ve always loved this self portrait. It makes me smile.
To end, check out and enter the NPR ekphrastic challenge. Kwame Alexander has chosen two paintings. Choose one that speaks to you and write a short poem inspired by it. Your poem might win and your words just might be heard on NPR.
My brother, Jim, was flying to Vietnam just as astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were hurling towards the moon on Apollo 11. It was July 1969 and Jim had just turned twenty. He spent a year in combat and his platoon was attached, at least part of the time to the 173rd Airborne Brigade. I was sixteen, and to say the least, naive about what dangers he was about to face. My parents never discussed politics or the war, but I remember my mother sending packages of bread, socks, batteries, candy and other things he requested. I had no idea Jim wrote letters to my parents, until he passed away last year after a long difficult illness.
When attended his memorial service in California I was delighted that his wife, Cindy, shared with me a packet of letters from Jim to my parents. I was amazed to receive them, read every word and transcribed them. As children, Jim was fun and sweet. I saw that again in the letters. He used to tease me like big brothers did, and I remember how determined he was to grow his hair long and wear bell bottoms in high school, which my father railed against.
I was so grateful to see his handwriting and to read his sentences. He was a very good writer who thought about details. It was touching how much he depended on “goodies” sent from home. He talked about his duties as a soldier, as well as his fears and longing for home. This is an ending of a six page letter:
Page 6
I'm expecting these packages any day now. Wish they'd hurry up and get here. I'm getting hungry for some decent food from back in the world. I really look forward to the goodies.
Well that's about all for now. I gotta go clean my mortar and get ready to fire tonight. I'll write a few lines tomorrow. Love, Jim
I have written poems based on his letters and it’s helped trigger memories about my family. The letters seem to lend themselves to poetry and I’ve thought a lot about what it means to take his words and rework their form, adding line breaks and pauses. How could they be part of a memoir of that year from my point of view as a high school senior? Or a fictionalized novel in verse? I’m not sure what this will evolve into, but it’s been meaningful to me.
Before I begin, congratulations to Kay McGriff, the winner of last weeks giveaway! She will soon receive a copy of David L. Harrison’s AFTER DARK. Enjoy!
My husband, Bart, and I traveled to Charleston, S.C. last weekend for a family wedding. It’s a beautiful, gracious city, full of friendly people. As a tourist, I felt caught between two worlds, the Antebellum South and today.
If you enjoy old things, there are many to see in South Carolina, beginning with the trees. Everywhere are lovely live oak trees with long spiraling limbs and hanging Spanish moss. This live oak has a name, “Angel Oak” and is said to be about five hundred years old!
“Angel Oak”
Slavery was presented honestly at tourist sites. Charleston was the center of the domestic slave trade after the importation of slaves was banned in 1807.
We visited the Slave Mart Museum on Chalmer’s street, where visitors see and hear the disturbing details involved in selling men, women and children.
The Old Slave Mart Museum
We saw the brick and pastel antebellum houses on a walking tour, then drove to the Middleton Place, a plantation 30 minutes away, where the horses, goats, pigs, and the chickens below have a very leisurely life, as the wealthy Middletons who once lived there did.
Middleton Place plantation.
An alligator lounged fifteen yards away by a stream, but I didn’t get close enough to snap a shot.
At this upstairs Confederate Museum in downtown Charleston, curated by the Daughters of the Confederacy, I saw small and dusty uniforms that were made for the physically smaller men of that time. I saw rifles, buttons, bullets, letters from soldiers, army cots, etc. The mission, according to a woman I spoke to, is to pay respect to Confederate soldiers. Small Confederate flags were on sale for a dollar. I didn’t buy one, though I paid eight dollars to get in.
The upstairs museum is run by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee had his own special room:
Robert E. Lee Room at the Confederate Museum
Before I left, I rode past the Mother Emmanuel AME Church, a beautiful white church which was the site of the horrific shooting in 2015. Out of respect, I didn’t take a photo. The church is a not far from where the Democratic debate was about to take place on 2/26/20.
In the Charleston Market and in museum gift shops, beautiful, sturdy and expensive sweetgrass baskets were sold. This is a Gullah tradition, originating in West Africa. When I saw the skill it takes to make one one of these baskets, I understood why they cost so much. At a park gift shop, a woman was weaving a basket and she inspired this poem:
Thank you, Karen Edmisten, for hosting Poetry Friday today. Please stop by and check out her post about February and the poem she is sharing this week.
I’m excited to be part of the discussion about an exciting new non-fiction picture book :
First: HOW CAN YOU WIN A COPY? Leave a comment on the left of this post by 2/24 and a way to contact you. A name will be randomly chosen and David L. Harrison’s AFTER DARK will be sent to the winner. Spread the word about this wonderful book on Facebook, Twitter, or other favorite platform.
Harrison’s AFTER DARK will entertain, teach and, encourage kids to see themselves in the exploits and habits of 21 different nocturnal friends. Check out the great review in Publishers Weekly. In Kirkus, AFTER DARK is referred to as a “fine collection of poetic odes.” These wonderful poems beg to be read aloud, revealing the drama in the lives of creatures out and about in the dark.
For example, a poem about a deer mouse, entitled “A Night’s Work,” is a story of survival, a mouse’s dramatic close call. In Harrison’s poem, the suspense is evoked by his short lines, sentence fragments. In the accompanying illustrations by Stephanie Laberis, we see a suspenseful mini three act play. In this first illustration, above, the mouse goes about his business looking for food:
Mouse creeps
without sound--
stops, listens.
Sniffs dirt
between corn rows,
finds a kernel
snatches it--
stops,
listens.
Owl's about
stares for mouse--
Fox is out.
sniffs for mouse--
stop listen.
In the second picture below, predators approach for the kill. Will they succeed?
Cheeks bulging
mouse races
Owl plummets
Fox strikes.
Talons rip
Teeth snap
empty air.
The last, this adorable mouse has escaped his close call:
Heart pounding,
mouse bounces
down his hole
for now.
corn forgotten
in his cheeks.
Mouse is safe for now, but so scared that he has forgotten the tasty dinner he’s gathered in his cheeks.
Another poem, Night Class, about skunks shows the importance of family. For example, in this single illustration we see a family of skunks going about their business, with danger present, in this case a dog. It’s a good thing Mama’s there.
NIGHT CLASS
Mama skunk
knows the story.
Never play
in an empty street.
Danger lurks
beyond the light,
in dark doorways,
behind trash cans,
around the corner.
Mama skunk
knows the story.
Never play
in an empty street.
The street is
never empty.
Little skunks stays close to Mama. That’s how they survive.
Here’s a poem about the porcupine that would be particularly fun for two kids to read together. Short lines are paired with longer ones that feel to me like a response when read aloud. And who won’t admire the scrappy looks of this porcupine?
DON'T LET HIM
NEEDLE YOU
Eats shoots and leaves-
even bark.
If you hear him coming,
better hark.
You wouldn't want to bump him
in the dark.
He's a mind-his-own business
kind of guy.
Would rather climb than walk,
rather shy,
but thirty thousand needles
testify
to thirty thousand reasons
to pass him by.
With tooth and needle fury--
a shocking sight--
he'll battle any rival
to gain the right
to approach a waiting female
in hopes she might
accept him as her mate
tonight.
Porcupine is a “mind-his-own-business/kind of guy” who is ready to battle if threatened but when he wants to get close to a female, he awaits permission.
I think Harrison’s writing paired with these dark, sweet but a little spooky, illustrations, go beyond teaching kids just the non-fiction facts, which are clearly listed in the back matter. Children can see and feel in themselves the need for safety, to eat and survive, and for the protection of a family.
I asked David Harrison if, as he wrote, he thought about how children identify with these animals on an emotional level. He responded:
“I don’t identify with animals in any sort of spiritual way but my respect for other living things runs deep enough to be evident in my writing. On my desk or near me are skulls of a black bear, a python, and a rattlesnake plus replicas of a short-faced bear and a saber-tooth cat. . . . Now and then I think about the animals they once were, living lives that are now in the distant past. . . If I write about the short-faced bear, I want my readers to feel its size, sense its presence, understand how hearts must have beat faster when it came around. This creature was more than a fact. It was a bear!”
In AFTER DARK: Poems about Nocturnal Animals, we understand much more than the facts about these important creatures.
Poetry Friday hosted by Cheriee Weichel at Library Matters, from Vancouver, sharing her insights into children’s lit . Today she introduces us to the clever work of Vancouver Poet, Avis Harley.
It’s Poetry Friday and thank you to Linda Baie at Teacher Dance for hosting. Happy Valentine’s Day! Linda has a sweet Valentine’s poem and some lovely hearts for us all to enjoy.
To celebrate, I’ll share a few hearts on a book mark by artist Michelle Kogan.
Lately, I’ve been reading novels in verse to study craft for my own work in progress. I’d like to recommend WHITE ROSE by author Kip Wilson.
This wonderful story is told in a non-linear fashion, back and forth in time. For me, this added to the suspense of this story about a group of teens rising up to resist Hitler’s lies. It’s based on a true story. Kirkus describes the story as as an “intense, bone chilling experience.” I agree.
Sophie, the smart and brave teen main character, with her brother Hans and other friends were part of a group called White Rose. The mission group’s mission in 1943 was to distribute suitcases of pamphlets telling the truth about the crimes of Hitler and the Reich, to encourage revolt. They didn’t fully appreciate what they were up against.
The book begins near the end of the story, in 1943 at Gestapo Headquarters. Sophie, the protagonist, has been arrested. The reader doesn’t know what Sophie has done, and this reader was hooked immediately:
FEBRUARY 18, 1943
Gestapo Headquarters
The cars screech to a
halt, officers pull
us out by the arms, haul
us inside and off to
separate
rooms, my heartbeat
pounding
all the while,
boom-boom
boom-boom
The ‘boom, boom” of Sophie’s beating heart, signifying her fear, is repeated in poems artfully throughout the book, an effective device to create suspense. The next poem takes us to her interrogation.
INTERROGATION
I carefully blend
a cupful of lies
into the bucket of truth
spread out in front of me
as Herr Mohr shoots
questions after question
trying to watch me off-guard.
Fräulein Scholl, why were you
carryingan empty suitcase with
you to the university?
There are more questions, but Sophie takes pride in being a clever liar.
From 1943, we are swept back to a year before their nightmare, 1935, with poems about Sophie, her four siblings and parents, a loving and bookish German family living in the town of Ulm. Before everything changes, she is joyful. She even falls in love. But the community of Ulm is dismantled relentlessly, step by step, by Hitler’s Reich:
RIPPLES
The signs begin
to appear like
mushrooms after a rain.
On the Stuttgarterstrafse bridge:
Juden in Ulm nicht erwünscht!
(Jews not wanted in Ulm!)
On park benches:
Nur fur Arier
(Only for Aryans.)
Sophie and her friends and siblings are expected to be good German youth and support the war effort. But after several years, Sophie and her brother Hans rebel and join White Rose, a group dedicated to spreading the truth and fomenting revolt.
But they can’t save their country, and these idealistic young people are turned in to the Gestapo by a janitor in the university where they are distributing pamphlets.
But, just before the novel ends, the reader is returned to 1934, a flashback of a happier time, when even Sophie believed Hitler’s fantasy of a sunny German future: “The youth is the future/of this Reich.” The reader appreciates how much Sophie has lost at the hands of the Nazis.
Their execution in 1943 follows and this story about these brave young people ends. For me, these young characters risking all for the truth were irresistible.
********
To end, I would like to send a Valentine’s Day greeting to a favorite creature. When I used to visit my mom in Florida, we would go to a place called Blue Springs State Park on the St. John’s River near Deland, Florida, to see the Manatees. It was a sleepy spot on the river shaded by trees hung with Spanish moss. It’s been a while and I often think of these interesting, nonchalant, half-ton friends, sometimes green tinged from algae blooming on their backs.
GREETING
Gentle manatees
hovering in the quiet--
Best wishes to you.
Thank you Laura Purdie Salas for hosting Poetry Friday this week. Stop by and read her music inspired verse.
I have always liked making things and my mother encouraged me to sew.
She left the Singer on the dining room table for me to use when I wanted. She’d be downstairs cooking in our family’s restaurant kitchen and I could always find her if I needed help. Her birthday was last month.
I don’t spend much time sewing now. But I am about to finish a small quilted wall hanging, the size of a extra large place mat, with wonky stripes inspired by the amazing quilting artist Maria Shell. It’s free form “modern quilting” with no rigid rules, like a free verse poem.
Without my mother’s encouragement I probably would have never learned to sew. I sometimes wonder if sewing has become a frivolous activity in the 21st century. But I know it isn’t.
The man who owned the fabric store where I grew up was a Holocaust survivor. His wife, an expert seamstress, used to help me pick out fabric. I’d look at bolts of fabric for hours and they were always patient and kind to me.
Thirty later I saw Mr. S again. He was elderly and his wife had recently passed away. It was touching to see him again. He told me that they hid together for many months, as teenagers, in a cave in the woods near Warsaw to escape the Nazis. With needle and thread Mrs. S sewed warm clothing with cloth that he stole during night time excursions to town. Her sewing helped keep them warm. My teachers or parents never taught me about the Holocaust, unfortunately, even as I had Jewish friends in school.
To end, I’ll share a haiku I wrote this morning inspired my the amaryllis blooming in my kitchen, four flowers blooming north, south, east and west.
Bold amaryllis, a lighthouse casting four beacons! Who keeps the lights on?
I can’t believe another Friday is here! Thank you, Jone Rush MacCulloh, for hosting Poetry Friday at Deo Writer. A journal give away, don’t miss it!
Last week I posted two novels in verse and one memoir in verse. This week I read another wonderful memoir in verse.
At a Highlights retreat I attended over a year ago, Nikki Grimes, the award winning author of numerous books for young people, talked with attendees about her work in progress, a memoir in verse, about her troubled but fascinating childhood. She spoke with much insight about the challenge of retrieving memories. And in ORDINARY HAZARDS, she writes:
THE MYSTERY OF MEMORY #4
Where do memories hide?
They sneak into
Hard-to-reach crevices,
and nestle quietly until
some random thought
or question burrows in,
hooks one by the tail
and pulls
Finally, out into the light
it comes,
sheepishly.
Nikki Grimes writes so honestly in poems about the struggles she faced beginning in the 1950’s as a very small girl. This includes her mother’s mental illness, a frightening foster care system, poverty, assaults and bullying by local gang members, and sexual abuse by her step-father, to name some of the “hazards” she encountered. And overlying all of this is one of the largest, the ever present racism that she, as black person, faced every day. The setting is New York City.
Nikki moves from home to home, school to school, often feeling like an outsider. She writes in her notebook concerning one of her foster homes:
Notebook
"Don't get comfortable,"
my foster sister Grace tells me.
"You don't belong here."
Thanks a lot! Like I don't know
I don't belong anywhere . . .
She describes her relationship with her mother who was schizophrenic, alcoholic, and unreliable. But it’s clear how important her mother is in these evocative lines.
SIZE DOESN'T MATTER
Four-foot-nine.
Such a tiny person
to have her initials
carved so deeply into
the meat of my soul.
There is a lot of heartbreak in these pages, but this memoir is also full of joy.
She writes about her many blessings, such as her sister’s affection, her faith in God, the comfort she discovers in books, her gift for writing, teachers who encourage, school friends, a father who was there to support her as an artist, amazing mentors, such as James Baldwin, who when she was a teen, asked to see her work, and always, her indomitable spirit. She more than survives.
She meets others who provide a larger, world view. In her notebook is this excerpt:
Notebook
"This too shall pass,"
my teacher tells me.
I'd suck my teeth and turn away,
but I don't because
Mrs. Wexler told me
she's a Holocaust survivor,
and I read
The Diary of Anne Frank
It’s impossible to do justice to ORDINARY HAZARDS with these few lines. It must be read and it’s well worth the time.
Now, as for a poem of mine to share here at Poetry Friday, I’ll share a fifth “Guess who haiku,” about yet another president.
Does anyone recognize this guy? Read on.
Soon after the war
declared Reconstruction done—
fear ruled the bayous.
#19 RUTHERFORD B. HAYES (1877-1881) This president removed all the troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. He believed in racial equality but wrongly believed Southern whites would treat blacks fairly. A hundred years of lynching and other violence against blacks followed.
