Welcome to poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tricia, HERE. Thank you, Tricia, for hosting this last week in March. Honestly I’m glad March is nearly over. It’s not my favorite month. April is a different story, a joyful one.
This month we were given a Poetry Peeps Challenge. I found in on Tanita Davis’ blog. I thought I’d take this on at the eve of April which is National Poetry Month.
I find pantoums difficult, the repetition can feel dull, and today I must have spent six hours on two different poems which I scrapped. That is the process, however, as frustrating as it can be sometimes. I finally wrote this, my final attempt, about an animal that captures my imagination even as it’s been extinct for 300 years.
IMAGINING THE DODO AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS
Only clues remain.
Head and foot displayed in Oxford.
What did the dodo look like?
Piece of skin in Copenhagen,
head and foot displayed in Oxford,
upper jaw in Prague,
skin in Copenhagen,
bone caches in Mauritius,
upper jaw in Prague,
we reconstruct this flightless bird.
Bone caches in Mauritius—
the dodo was an island bird.
We reconstruct this flightless bird
that fell prey to cats and rats.
The Dodo was an island bird,
alone, the bird had thrived.
Sailors brought the cats and rats,
only clues remain.
What did the dodo look like?
In our past the bird remains.
Janice Scully 2024
Photo by McGill Library found on Unsplash.
This flightless, island bird was no match for species of animals introduced by sailors in the 1600’s.
Have a great weekend! Thank you, Tricia, for hosting!
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the talented poet and teacher, Mary Lee Hahn HERE. Thank you for hosting and I look forward to the poetry you share with us this week!
WINTERY WOODS IN CENTRAL NEW YORK
Those who live where it snows know what it’s like to open the front door after a snow storm and see, hear, and smell winter. Even in the midst of climate change, those days still happen and was on display this week:
Welcome to Poetry Friday. Our host on this first week of November is Mary Lee Hahn HERE. Thank you Mary Lee! Be sure to stop by and see what she’s sharing this week.
Today, I read a pile of picture books at my local bookstore and would like to share one by a writer who is passionate about kids and books, Miranda Paul. She is one of the founders of the WNDB movement. Her book, LITTLE LIBRARIES, BIG HEROES, Illustrated by John Parra, is a book worth adding to your library. I have. It’s not just about little libraries. It’s also about following a passion, growing an idea, generosity and public service all in one. This book is for everyone.
Several weeks ago I wrote wrote about my hometown Carnegie Library Here. But one doesn’t have to have 350 million dollars to build thousands of libraries. In LITTLE LIBRARIES: BIG HEROES, we learn that some libraries can be built for much, much less and still make a big impact.
In this true story, a young man named Todd, an “ordinary guy” who had been inspired by his mom to love books, built the first little library, like the one above. Neighbors loved it. It caught on. He told his friend about it.
Todd felt his nifty box of books had potential. He called up his friend Rick, who was always chock-full of grand ideas.
Rick thought that they could
build thousands of little boxes!
Like Andrew Carnegie,
who once built 2,510 libraries!
They could take trips!
Like Lutie Stearns, who brought
traveling libraries all over Wisconsin!
Rick liked the idea, but . . .
WAIT A MINUTE!
Andrew Carnegie had been a
wealthy businessman. Lutie Stearns
was a trained librarian. The two of
them were just ORDINARY guys.
(And they were particularly low
on cash.)
How man libraries could two
ORDINARY guys create?
How far could ORDINARY people
spread an idea?
They agreed on one thing--
they wanted to find out.
So the two “ordinary” young men decided to explore their dream of creating a Little Library movement. This is their story. The result: as of 2019, there were 75,000 official, registered Little Free Libraries in eighty-eight countries.
I was touched by this book about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and making a difference. It’s an important story.
Before I close I’ll turn your attention to the changing weather and the holidays looming with three seasonal haiku:
Thank you, Margaret Simon, at Reflections on the Teche, for hosting today. While you check out what she has in store for this Poetry Friday, you can read, on her June 2nd post, a found poem well worth reading that has to do with the protests of this week. There has been legal progress in the George Floyd case, and we hope, reform on many fronts over time.
Today I’ve been thinking about time and calendars. (as an aside, I don’t know why Julius Caesar is on the 1582 Gregorian calendar below. But like Susan B. Anthony’s face on our coins, Pope Gregory Xlll must have admired Caesar. )
Anyway, I’ve been thinking more specifically about flowers and calendars. Flowers are a kind of calendar, that mark time each year, April through September in upstate New York, from crocus to crysanthamum. How different it is to see flowers in December, like the primrose, in California where my sister lives. I am grateful that I can depend on certain flowers appearing every year to celebrate the month and season. This poem is a small homage to that:
MY CALENDAR
The tulips are pink,
cone flowers yellow,
daisies are white,
the friendliest fellows,
they swell and they bloom
in my garden in June
never too late,
never too soon.
We must pay attention because, like acts in a cabaret, allotted only a brief window, flowers come and go. There’s drama in the natural world, all of it driven by time.
I felt sad writing this poem, thinking of everything I have let go of beyond flowers. But there is always something to look forward to. Some things are as small as a haircut and bigger things like returning to work and school. And so many look forward to deep structural reform and social justice in America.
I hope everyone is healthy. Make sure you stop by to check out what Margaret Simon has in store for Poetry Friday.
Welcome to Poetry Friday. Our host today is Sally Murphy. Thank you, Sally, for hosting and my thoughts are with her and her country in the struggle against the horrendous fires. Sally has shared a soothing poem about the beach and also the good news that she is busy compiling a list of her favorite novels in verse. I’ll look forward to seeing her recommendations.
My post today is about something I’ve been exploring, that is, the work of the first American children’s poets.
James Sterling Tippett (1985-1958) is an American children’s poet who anyone writing for children can learn from. He saw the world from a child’s perspective and it’s clearly evident in his gentle rhyme and in his subjects, still relevant today. As a boy, he lived on his grandfather’s farm in Missouri, but as a young man he moved to Nashville then New York to teach. He wrote of the country and the city with authority.
This is one of those many books I wish I had read to my boys when they were little. First, a sample of his poems about the country and nature:
FAMILIAR FRIENDS (The first of three Stanzas)
The horses, the pigs,
And the chickens,
The turkeys, the ducks
And the sheep!
I can see all my friends
From my window
As soon as I waken
from sleep.
Because of copyright restrictions, I’ll stop here, but I will say that the poem continues with images of a cat walking a fence, geese swimming, a pony trotting, Cows switching flies, and a mother dog with a surprise of new pups. There is a lot of action in this simple poem.
HOUSE FOR BLUEBIRDS (two of four stanzas)
Bluebirds,
Come to this house
Which we have hung
For you and your young.
We made a little porch
Where you can sit.
Please, bluebirds,
Come and look at it.
The reader feels the longing in the child’s voice. It’s a sweet poem. Unfortunately, for a child, when you have a bird house, immediate occupancy is unlikely.
In contrast to his poems about farm life, he writes poems about city life. He wrote about the subway and he also wrote about the mystery of an apartment buildings:
THE ROOF (two of four stanzas)
At the top of the stairway
We open a door
And there is the roof
Spread out like a floor.
There are little roof-houses
Behind which we hide
And many tall pipes
And a wall at the side.
To a child living in an apartment building or not, the roof must indeed seem like a world apart, a mysterious place.
It helps me in my efforts to write for kids, to look at poets that came before, like Tippett. Their images and vocabulary are still evocative even for kids today, which I find rather comforting.
Here’s a nature poem I wrote that I’ll share. It’s inspired by a walk my husband and I take along a stream that sometimes is full of frogs. It sat at the bottom of this leafy wall of shale. Sorry, no frogs today! You have to imagine them hiding.
