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.
Love it, Janice! A good addition.
Intriguing underground maps. Where will they lead?
Nice to take us in another direction, maybe? Love this line, Janice!
This is such a fascinating process, and yours is such a fun line!
I like your “blinking back” as if the character is growing a bit tired and ready for possibly sleep–thanks for brining us here!
Janice, I am wondering if the character will take a look at what is underground now that you introduced an interesting thought.
The thing is, the first line says no maps, but I forgot and stuck one in there! We’ll see what happens.
Wonderful! I love how the sounds of this line work with the previous line–and that maps are making a reappearance here near the end.
Ahhh… grounding is just a bit with this imaginative line, Janice? Terrific!
It’s fun to follow the path of this poem. 🙂 And don’t we all want to be buried in the library?