COVID? It’s nothing personal.

Welcome to Poetry Friday! We are well into July and today hosted by Jan at Birdseed Studio. Thank you, Jan, for hosting! Stop by and see what she has to offer us this week.

During Covid, I’ve pretty much done what I could to avoid getting sick. I have been vaccinated and boosted and avoided crowds. I traveled cross country in April without a problem. So when our oldest son from California asked us to meet him for three days in New York, we drove there.

But, I immediately had a feeling, immersed in the crowded sidewalks and restaurants, that things might be different here. I could imagine the virus everywhere.

And we came home with Covid. Our son, who recently had it, didn’t get reinfected.

Poor me! But though I regret being a link in the viral chain of transmission, for three days we had a happy visit. Vaccines and boosted, we weighed the pros and cons and took our chances. Four days after testing positive, we are feeling a lot better. We got away without serious consequences so far.

New York from our Hotel roof.

I was inspired to write this poem by my experience this week. 

A WEEKEND AWAY IN THE TIME OF COVID 7/22

The virus won't care
if you are bedridden;
it found a new home
convenient, unbidden.

Soon aching and shivering,
fatigued and hacking
plans for next weekend?
I wouldn't start packing.

It's just how it is,
took a chance, got sick,
like others do too,
not hard to predict.

I suppose it's too early
to forget, to pretend
the pandemic is over.
Nothing personal,Friend. 

©Janice Scully 2022 (Draft)

I often think how different the last two years would have been if the sick were not disappearing into ICU’s and if Covid had been a different disease.

What would have happened if it were the bubonic plague, which inspired poet John Davies in the early 1600’s to write stanzas like this, stanzas that conjured visions of “carcase-carriers,” and citizens flooding streets in fear, guards on the roads: 

TRIUMPH OF DEATH
by John Davies

LONDON now smokes with vapors that arise	
  From his foule sweat, himselfe he so bestirres:	
“Cast out your dead!” the carcase-carrier cries,	
  Which he by heapes in groundlesse graves interres.—	

Now like to bees in summer’s heate from hives,	        5
  Out flie the citizens, some here, some there;	
Some all alone, and others with their wives:	
  With wives and children some flie, all for feare!	
 
Here stands a watch, with guard of partizans,	
  To stoppe their passages, or to or fro,	        10
As if they were not men, nor Christians,	
  But fiends or monsters, murdering as they go.

Excerpt from "Triumph of Death" HERE

Well, we don’t have Bubonic plague and though we might have Covid still, there are reasonable remedies and more to come. Even having Covid, it feels less threatening at this moment to me than the threat to Democracy.

Now I’m telling myself, “Lighten up!” Really, I’m trying.

I hope everyone is healthy and all the teachers and librarians on Poetry Friday are enjoying what has been for some, at least here in Syracuse, a lovely summer.

Janice

Supernovae or What is beyond My Yard?

Welcome to Poetry Friday. I’m the host this first Friday in July. I hope all of you are well and enjoying summer, in spite of all that’s going on. We must make sure to VOTE this November.

For some reason, my computer won’t allow me to comment on some posts. I will continue to try, but if you don’t see a comment from me, it doesn’t mean I’m not reading and learning from Poetry Friday posts.

I recently bought the book: BILL BRYSON: *A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, published in 2003.

Reading science never fails to inspire a poem, and this book did. I read in the first few pages about supernovae and learned in laywoman’s terms what they are. Here’s a definition from Bryson’s book:

“Subernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy.” Star gazer and minister Robert Evans from Australia, who carefully searched for and discovered newly exploding supernovae from his back yard, stated that a supernova is “like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once.”

Of course, supernovoe are tremendously far away, so we see only specks of light.

How did he know he had found a newly exploded star? It seems so simple:

Unlike the light from older stars, light from a newly exploded star or supernova “occupies a point of space that wasn’t filled before.”

That’s it. New light in a space that wasn’t filled before. That’s the evidence he looked for. And he apparently was good at finding supernovae with his backyard telescope.

This YouTube video tells about Reverend Robert Evans, amateur astronomer:

So this week, as I sat on my porch behind the wall of leaves that surrounds it, this poem came to me. 

WHAT IS OUT THERE? 

For Robert Evans, amateur astronomer.

From my leafy porch,
dogs bark, children yell,
birds chirp, 
all invisible.

Still, I know they exist 
and I invent a conversation
between unseen sparrows, 
guess the game being played,
from the thud of a ball,
picture the size of a dog 
from a bark,

like Mr. Evans,
in his yard,
in Australia,
imagining a supernova,
from remnants of sudden
distant light, 
that filled a vacuum 
between familiar stars.


© Janice Scully (draft)
A royalty free image of a supernova from Dreamstime.com. I doubt Robert Evans saw anything like this from his back yard telescope.

I’ll be away on Poetry Friday, but will catch up and hopefully comment on all the posts later in the weekend. Thank you all for stopping by. I appreciate every visitor.

Janice

Making Things: A Pinch Pot and a Poem

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Catherine HERE. Be sure to stop by this weekend. Thank you, Catherine, for hosting!

Like many I’ve met on Poetry Friday, I love to write, cook, sew and otherwise make things. I love writing poems, a collection of words that never existed before. Amy Ludwig Vanderwater has written a delightful poetry picture book celebrating the joy in making things. Many I am sure have read it.

My sister, Barbara Rog, likes to make things, too. She is a professional ceramicist and a teacher for many years, currently living in Burbank, California. Recently, she has been making pendants and many other pretty things.

Though she’s retired from teaching, she recently taught a few Girl Scouts how to make pinch pots. If you’d like to see her teaching video for children, the YouTube link is here.

The two girls below are fashioning pinch pots with clay. They glazed them and Barbara fired them in her kiln. In the absence of a kiln, air dry clay can be used.

They made these little pots:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_3557-rotated.jpeg

LITTLE PINCH POT

Warm from the kiln, 
one of a kind,
my fingertips forever
etched in clay.

I bring you home today.

There you will sit, 
sparkling blue,
on a shelf
or windowsill, 

soon to hold 
spices, 
salt,
shells,
or sea glass,

each 
more splendid
because of you. 

© Janice Scully 2022

I hope you all are writing or otherwise creating something that will bring you joy. Thank you Catherine for hosting!

By Best,

Janice

Manners For a Child of 1918

Welcome to Poetry Friday! And a joyful Father’s Day!

This June week we are hosted by the extraordinary artist and poet Michelle Kogan Here. Be sure to stop by and see what she’s sharing this week.

The year is half past and January seems like yesterday! So much going on in the world to pay attention to, but also, I’ve been enjoying the lovely outdoors here in Syracuse.

The sunny warmth has been exhilarating. In an effort to slow down a bit to enjoy it, I’m missed a few posts, but I think I must not the only one enjoying summer. I have continued working on a collection of poems for a picture book, about my family which is slowly taking form. Quite slowly.

I searched for a poem to share this week, about a less-hurried time, a poem that would make me want to slow down as I read it. I found this one by Elizabeth Bishop. It’s written from a child’s perspective.

I didn’t know if it was public domain, so I shared only the beginning here and a website with the entire poem. I hope you like it. 

Manners 
For a Child of 1918
by Elizabeth Bishop

My Grandfather said to me
as we sat on the wagon seat,
"Be sure to remember to always
speak to everyone you meet.

We met a stranger on foot.
My grandfather's whip tapped his hat.
"Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day."
And I said it and bowed where I sat.

Then we overtook a boy we knew 
with his big pet crow on his shoulder.
"Always offer everyone a ride;
don't forget that when you get older,"

my grandfather said. So Willy
climbed up with us,'but the crow
gave a "Caw!" and flew off. I was worried.
How would he know where to go?

(Read the rest Here)

Right now, a thunder and lightening storm has just begun with a drenching downpour. A wonderful roar! I hope you all get some rain if you need it.

Thank you Michelle, for hosting.

My best,

Janice

A Poem by Fatima Asghar

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Karen Edmisten HERE. Thank you for hosting!

I just came home from browsing in the poetry section of our local bookstore. I wanted to discover a poet I didn’t know, and I did. I brought home IF THEY COME FOR US, by Fatimah Asghar. She is a Pakistani Muslim living in America.

From the book jacket: “Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of Identity, place, and belonging.”

Her poems deal with living in a country where she feels hated and endangered. The poem below begins by mentioning the Taliban and I, for one, am beginning to understand viscerally the kind of vulnerability that inspired this poem. Especially after losing so many children lately.

Her entire poem “For Peshawar” can be found HERE. Here are a few stanzas: 

EXERPT FROM "FOR PESHAWAR"
December 16, 2014
by Fatimah Asghar

Before attacking school in Pakistan, the Taliban sends kaftan, a white cloth that marks Muslim burials, as a form of  psychological terror. 

In my dreams, the children are still alive
at school. In my dreams they still play.

I wish them a mundane life.
Arguments with parents. Goundings.

Chasing a budding love around the playground.
Iced Mango slices in hot summer. 

Lassi dripping from lips.
Fear of being unmarried. Hatred of family

next door. Kheer at graduation. Fingers licked
with mehndi. Blisters on the back of a heel.

Mendhi are henna tattoos that I know are popular in India. Kheer is the name in India for Rice Pudding. We want similar pleasures for all children. The language in this poem reflects a different culture but like all people, we have more in common than different.

I wrote this today, inspired by Asghar’s poem. 

AN ORDINARY LIFE
(Inspired by "For Peshawar" by Fatima Asghar) 

I wish all children 
to live long enough,
to know they are part of 
something bigger.

I wish them ice cream 
on a summer night,  
friends to love always, 
the hurt of breaking up, 

good health 
and what it feels like
to grow as tall 
as parents.

to see your mother's face 
in the mirror, 
or your father's,
and be glad for it. 

© Janice Scully (draft) 2022 








.

Thank you, Karen for hosting! I hope all teachers and librarians have an especially joyful summer.

Janice

Upside-down

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Linda Mitchel at her blog HERE. Thank you, Linda, for hosting!

If you would like to know what Poetry Friday is, find out from poet, Renee LaTulippe, HERE.

I’m using the above image to express how I feel after this week’s violence in Buffalo and now in a Texas School. Am I the only one who feels insane hearing explanations about why gun control is impossible? A conservative Texas lawmaker was asked why 18 year olds should be sold weapons. He said that since eighteen year old boys bear arms in the military, they should be able to bear arms outside the military.

I thought about that. I tried to understand that from my own experience. When my brother, 20, was in Vietnam, he was trained how to use a weapon and when he was discharged, he didn’t come home with a machine gun, not that I can recall. He didn’t walk the streets of our small town carrying a gun and I never heard him complain about the lack of it, rather was glad to be free of it and the war.

In the new anthology IMPERFECT ll, edited by Tabatha Yeatts, there is a perfect poem to express how I feel this week and will for quite a while. (Tabatha gave me permission to share it.) 

UPSIDE-DOWN
by Robert Schechter

Don't tell me that I'm upside-down! 

   My top's where it should be!

If you're convinced I'm flipped around,

   then blame yourself, not me.

This kingdom isn't yours to rule.

   You wear no monarch's crown.

Why can't you see I'm right-side-up?

   It's you who's upside down.

I hope, because I have to, that through reason and compassion, the U.S. can get its priorities straight.

Thank you, Linda, for hosting. I love to share one of my own poems, but I don’t have anything new. But I have this one that I shared previously from Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell’s book, THINGS WE DO, which celebrates an everyday joy of childhood. 

KICK

By Janice Scully

Brass shaker
worm waker

Hi popper
cloud topper

Ball smasher
goal crasher

Tie breaker
score maker

Watch me
KICK!

Have a good weekend.

Janice

Two Haiku and Two Novels

Welcome to Poetry Friday! Today we are hosted by Carmela at Teaching Authors. Here. Stop by and see what she has for us today.

What is Poetry Friday? Find out more HERE.

I didn’t post last week. Things have been hectic but I’ve been reading and there are two novels I’d like to share them with you.

But first, an haiku.

The following greeted me in my in-box from Poets.org this week. 

ONE FLOWER
by Jack Kerouac 1922-1969

One flower
   on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon

This little verse captures a moment, and the beauty in it for me is the image of something small and beautiful, calm, simply there, and brave in the face of an abyss, here in the form of a canyon. It seemed a perfect beginning to this post as both novels are about courage. They are both written in prose.

The first is a fabulous middle grade novel entitled ONE SMALL HOP, by author Madelyn Rosenberg, published in 2021 by Scholastic Press.

The abyss in this novel, like the canyon in Kerouac’s haiku, is climate change. The main Character, a seventh grade boy named Ahab, and his friends live in a dark futuristic setting. The young characters in this novel their reality head on.

Most animals are extinct. The sea has risen, the water is toxic and children live inside most of the time. But when a lone male frog is discovered by one of Ahab’s friends, the kids focus on the possibility of saving the frog species. To do it, they must smuggle a frog across toxic terrain into Canada, where they have located a lone female frog. Will the kids introduce the frogs and create a new future?

I expected to find this book devoid of hope. Read it and I promise you will be uplifted by Rosenberg’s story and humor.

The other novel I read is HEARTS UNBROKEN, a YA novel by bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith. Like her main character Louise, She is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

Louise sits on the canyon/ abyss of racism. She is working on the school newspaper. Her little brother, also Muskcogee, has been cast as the Tin Man in the school play, The Wizard of Oz, and a black girl, a talented singer, has been casted as Dorothy.

When the wrath of the parents in this mostly white school come down against the casting of the play, (Obviously, complained white parents, they got the parts only because they were minorities). Louise and her brother get caught up in the swirl of anger which leads to a grave threat of physical danger.

But Smith has crafted a page turner and we see believable conflict play out in several compelling story lines as truth battles misinformation and prejudice. Readers will see, and understand, through this story, the hatred all minorities are up against day after day in America.

One last haiku. 

SUMMER READING

On a beach, at home,
or shadowed by deep green leaves,
stories fill the hush.

©Janice Scully 2022

Thank you, Carmela, for hosting.

Imperfect ll, A Poetry Anthology for Middle Schoolers

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the amazing Jama on her blog, Jama’s Alphabet Soup, HERE . Make sure you stop by and see the art and poetry she is sure to share.

Poetry can provide a vacation from the small intense worlds in which kids and all of us live day to day. IMPERFECT II, edited by Tabatha Yeatts, is a thoughtful and also entertaining poetry anthology of eighty poems that in different ways address the notion of perspective. This collection will give the middle school audience ways to think about what they see happening, the stress, all the things that seem in any given moment more important than they really are. This is Yeatt’s second anthology after IMPERFECT: Poems about Mistakes.

One of the first poems, in IMPERFECT ll, is “Compared to What?” by Robert Schechter. Written in rhyming quatrains, the poem shows his fun take on perspective. Here are the first three stanzas (out of eleven) 

Compared to What?
by Robert Schecter

A pebble isn't all that big
   compared to stones or boulders,
but it's a mountain to the ant
   who lifts it on its shoulders.

And if you were a molecule,
   an atom or a proton,
a water drop would be a lake
   for you to sail your boat on.

An elephant is huge for sure;
   its trunk would crush your scale.
And yet it doesn't seem that large
   if you're a humpback whale.

The rest of Schechter’s poem takes us into outer space to consider the sizes of stars and galaxies, that make the pebble or a whale seem small, because it provides a different perspective.

Wisdom is sprinkled generously throughout the anthology in poems such as this:

It takes a lot of courage and strength
to change yourself. You need to be brave
enough to look at what is better for you
and change for that. 

Matt Haig

And here’s one free verse poem that certainly speaks to me, as I remember times when I said the wrong thing and relived that horrid moment for days or much longer:

RUMINATION
by Stanley Dunlap

It's over,
so why
does my brain want to
revisit
reimagine
recreate
What I COULD have said
What I SHOULD have said?

As hard as I try
to get it right
in all these scenarios,
I will
never change what has already happened.

Perhaps I should
stop the endless imagining
of what might have been
give myself a break
and know that I have surely learned
surely grown
and will surely 
do better 
next time.

These are just a few examples and there are many great more poems in this book that are accessible to young readers and fun to read. They might help adults begin conversations with kids about topics that teachers and parents might need a nudge to initiate.

IMPERFECT II ends with back matter about positive thinking and also tips on releasing tension with deep breathing. I think these end chapters would have been helpful to me as a young person.

Imperfect ll can be purchased on Amazon, HERE.

Speaking of perspective, passing though St. Louis recently, I felt small indeed next to the famous arch there. I had no idea it was so big.

Another place to gain a sense of perspective is Badlands National Park in S. Dakota, that filled the horizon.

Imperfect ll can be purchased on Amazon, HERE. I wish all a wonderful weekend, and if you’re in a temperate climate, daffodils, new leaves on trees and forsythias.

Thank you Jama for hosting!

The Progressive Poem is Here!

Well, here I was today staring down line 26 by JoAnn Early Macken, trying to find a suitable quote or inspiration to continue on with. And my readers will be teachers and librarians!!! It’s a little intimidating. So, what will it be? JoAnn Early Macken left me with a song and I continued us on another imaginative fun journey, I hope.

I took a line from a poem in J. Patrick Lewis’ book that I liked, Please Bury Me In the Library.

THE PROGRESSIVE POEM OF 2022, SO FAR:

Where they were going, there were no maps.

   Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today.

Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!

   We have to go back. I forgot something.

But it’s spring, and the world is puddle-wonderful,

so we’ll whistle and dance and set off on our way.

Come with me, and you’ll be in a land of pure imagination.

Wherever you go, take your hopes, pack your dreams, and never forget –

 it is on our journeys that discoveries are made.

And then it was time for singing.

Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain, paint with all the colors of the wind, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky?

Suddenly, they stopped and realized they weren’t the only ones singing.

Listen, a chattering of monkeys! Let’s smell the dawn 
and taste the moonlight, we’ll watch it all spread out before us.

The moon is slicing through the sky. We whisper to the tree, 
tap on the trunk, imagine it feeling our sound.

Clouds of blue-winged swallows, rain from up the mountains,

Green growing all around, and the cool splash of the fountain.

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden,

a bright, secret, quiet place, and rather sad; 


 and they stepped out into the middle of it.

Their minds’ libraries and lightning bugs led them on.

The darkwood sings, the elderhist blooms, the sky lightens; listen and you will find your way home.

The night sky would soon be painted, stars gleaming overhead, a beautiful wild curtain closing on the day.

Mud and dusk, nettles and sky – time to cycle home in the dark. 

There are no wrong roads to anywhere

lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove.

Standing at the fence of the cottage, 
    I hear the new note in the voices of the birds.

I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the message of my heart upward.

I make up a song that goes on singing all by itself

Surfing rivers of wind way up high . . . calling zeep, zeep, zeep in the sky,

blinking back the wee wonder of footprints, mouse holes, and underground maps.

THE NEXT LINE IS FROM TABATHA HERE.

Sources:
 
1. The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories, by Emily Winfield Martin
2. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
3. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
4. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
5. inspired by "[in Just-]" by E. E. Cummings
6. "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
7. Maybe by Kobi Yamada
8. Sarah, Plain, and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
9. inspired by Disney songs "A Whole New World" from Aladdin and "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas
10. The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor
11. adapted from Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman
12. adapted from The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron
13. adapted from On the Same Day in March by Marilyn Singer
14. adapted from a line in Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
15. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
16. Prince Caspian by CS Lewis
17. The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
18. Kate DiCamillo's The Beatryce Prophecy
19. The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith
20. Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
21. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
22. "Dance Me to the End of Love" by Leonard Cohen
23. adapted from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
24. A quote from Terry Tempest Williams in Birdology by Sy Montgomery
25. adapted from "When I Was a Bird" by Katherine Mansfield
26. Warbler Wave by April Pulley Sayre with Jeff Sayre
27. a quote from the poem, "Reading in the Dark" from the book, "Please Bury Me In the library" by J. Patrick Lewis.

WE BELONG, by Laura Purdie Salas, Revisited

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Margaret HERE. She is always ready with a post that inspires readers, and special thanks to her for organizing the Progressive Poem that gets more intriguing every week.

This week I ask that you please scroll down and click on the title of my last week’s post, featuring WE BELONG, a fabulous new picture book by Laura Purdie Salas, Illustrated by Carlos Vélez Aguilera.

I was slow last week getting my on-line link in the line up, so I’m posting it again. My apologies! But this book that is relevant and I want to make sure it isn’t missed.

Thank you, Margaret, for hosting this week!