On Poetry

Sunflower acrostic

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

Happy National Poetry Month!

At Ethical ELA, Bryan Ripley Crandall kicks off VerseLove by inviting teacher-poets to compose acrostics: “Think of your  person, place, or phrase. Lay the letters onto the page as if fallen leaves. Game-on. Write as if you are ‘gifting’ to another, and use each letter to craft an original poem.”

I love acrostics and have long believed this ancient form is underused.

As I pondered a topic, I went to the refrigerator door to start breakfast, and there it was:

The Drawing My Granddaughter Made During a “Sleepover”

Six years old, blissfully
Unaware that it’s the emblem of a 
Nation being invaded, she announces:
Franna, I am making this for you.
Love crayoned on the paper as
Our own special symbol.
When night falls, we put on our pink pajamas
Emblazoned with these light-seeking faces
Radiating joy of now, promise for tomorrow.

She texts me in the evenings sometimes to be sure I am wearing my sunflower pajamas

Buzzard on the steeple

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Here is the church
Here is the steeple
Here sits the buzzard
watching the people.

Most unholy,
it said of the scene
And people dare
to think ME unclean?

Destruction, it said
bowing its head
Will they carry on
’til all are dead?

What’ll be left?
That’s food for thought…
So the bird prayed
o’er what we have wrought.



Inspiration: This photo taken by my friend, E. Johnson.
I edited the color to “Noir.”

This is, oddly, my second buzzard post in recent weeks. The first was dedicated to a grieving buzzard who wouldn’t leave his dead mate by the roadside (Carry on). I couldn’t resist using “carry on” again here, connoting the service the buzzard (vulture, actually) provides to the world by eating carrion.

While classified as unclean in the Bible due to its diet making it unsafe for human consumption, the vulture is a mighty agent of cleansing power. Consider: The common turkey vulture is in the condor family Cathartidae, drawn from Greek carthartes, meaning “purifier.” It is the same root for catharsis: purging, purifying, cleansing. The vulture can ingest toxins and bacteria that kill other scavengers. Its head is featherless, easier to clean after its unsanitary work. It holds its wings out wide for the sun to burn away germs.

In some cultures, the bird is considered sacred, especially in those that perform sky burials.

Above all, the vulture has been a powerful symbol since ancient times, most often of life, death, rebirth, protection, and wisdom.

I think about that, looking at this buzzard perched here on the steeple.

Like a bird of pray.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March




When you first laughed

/ Fran Haley / 10 Comments

a pantoum for Micah, age 5 months

When you first laughed
your family stood
surrounding you
oh how sweet the sound

Your family stood
filled with awe
oh how sweet the sound
of happy forevers beginning

Filled with awe
we are your cloud of witnesses
of happy forevers beginning
on the last day of your first winter

We are your cloud of witnesses
surrounding you
on the last day of your first winter
when you first laughed

Micah, here are your first laughs, captured on video. Your mom, dad, big sister, Grandpa, and I were all there to see it. Notice that the word “Happy” is on your onesie. I hope you know, someday, how much happiness you’ve brought to all of us. This actually occurred on the last day of winter. Your first spring has begun. A whole lifetime of love, blossoming…

You are a joy, sweet Micah-roon.

Love you forever.

—Franna

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March

Spreading poetic wings

/ Fran Haley / 16 Comments

This is my first attempt at writing a ghazal (pronounced “guzzle”) a medieval Persian form of poetry with ancient Arabic roots. Traditional ghazals have themes of love, longing, and loss. They are often sung. Couplets are typically comprised of autonomous lines and the final stanza sometimes contains the poet’s name or a connection to its meaning (mine being either “from France” or “free one.”)

I have entitled this ghazal “Relationships.” Is it romantic? About a married couple? About colleagues? Or… what? You decide, Dear Reader…

For the record, I find this form incredibly challenging. I am still working on it (hmmm. Same can be said of some relationships).

Relationships

We yoked ourselves in this chosen journey
We get old, in one another’s way 

Passions burn like inspirational fire
Tongues burn cold in another way

A heart weighted with iron and ire
Can be a heart of gold in another way 

Narratives are sometimes cardboard boxes
Packaging people to be sold in another way

Your words cannot cage me, for I’m a bird set free 
Your truth is yours; I hold it another way

Bird in Hand 3. mollycakes. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

*******

with thanks to Wendy Everard on the last day of the March Open Write at Ethical ELA, and to all who provided poetic inspiration there over the past five days

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March

Two Shards in the Mosaic of Our Time: Olga and Amellia

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

I heard their stories over the last week and was deeply moved by their courage...

From the fragments
they rise
glittering
like stars in the heavens
glowing
like sunflowers in the field
turning their faces to the light

iridescent shards
in the mosaic
of our time

a prima ballerina
leaving her homeland
and the Bolshoi
to join the Dutch ballet:
‘I am against war
with all the fibers
of my soul’
 
a little girl
all of seven
consoling others with song 
while sheltered
in a bunker
encouraging help
for her homeland
after escaping to Poland
with her grandmother
standing onstage
before a huge crowd
in traditional dress,
a little nightingale, singing
her national anthem:
‘The glory and freedom
of Ukraine
has not yet perished…”

They dance and sing
through the brokenness

iridescent shards
in the mosaic of our time

turning their faces to the light
like sunflowers in the field
glowing
like stars in the heavens
glittering
they rise
from the fragments.

Note: The sunflower and nightingale are national symbols of Ukraine

*******

with thanks to Wendy Everard, Tuesday host of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, for the idea of mosaic as a frame for poetry

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March

Birdspiration

/ Fran Haley / 24 Comments

a story in haiku

As I drive to work
psyching myself for the day
I look up, and there

on the power lines
they sit, like kings or angels
the day’s guardians

watching as I pass
—oh, bestow on my spirit
creatures of the air

robins, your good cheer
occasional snow-plumed hawks,
fierce acuity…

it dawns on me, now,
that most of the birds I see
are doves, offering

the one thing needed
for the living of this day:
Look up. Claim the peace.

Photo: Mourning Dove. FotoGrazio. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

*******

with thanks to Chiara Hemsley, Monday host of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, for the inspiration to compose a poem around the phrase “look up”

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March

Lament and celebration poem

/ Fran Haley / 16 Comments

with thanks to Andrew Moore, host of Sunday’s Open Write on Ethical ELA. Andrew challenged teacher-poets to compose around lament plus celebration (these don’t have to be related; this is meant to be exercise in writing freely, in any form). He writes: “My inspiration comes from a distinct lack of good sadness, grief, and lament beside a healthy laugh and looking forward to the changes the future may bring.” The poem can be as light-hearted, silly, or serious as the poet desires.

Here’s where I am today:

Remains

Today, I mourn 
the destruction of trees along my rural byways
the displacement of wildlife
the destruction of Ukraine
the displacement of her people
the systemic demoralization of teachers
the systemic misplacement of trust

Today, I celebrate
the remnants
of trees
wildlife
Ukraine
her people
teachers
trust

Today, I hope
for restoration
in revelation 
and reverence

before all
become revenants

“The Elephant – great destruction.” Public domain. Note the trees, the cities, the elephant all in stages of disappearing … elephants, by the way, symbolize wisdom, memory, prosperity…

******

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.

Ingredient poem

/ Fran Haley / 22 Comments

Thanks to John Noreen who hosted yesterday’s Ethical ELA Open Write with the invitation to pay homage to food that comforts and sustains us. John focused on process; he suggested that we “create the way we cook.” He says when he cooks, he takes a central ingredient and gets going, improvising along the way.

Sounds like a metaphor for writing to me…

Daily Writing Staple

An idea forms
inside my brain
like an egg forms
within a bird

one moment
nothing
and the next
the shell
of something

I feel new presence
of fragile life
within

or at least
the provisional sac
of nourishment
for building and 
sustaining life
as it forms
deep inside
living membrane

until it should hatch
and eventually fly
on wings of its own

or

like my breakfast egg
boiled for long enough
at the right temperature
the idea solidifies
and gives life
to me

one simple ingredient
containing a whole world
of possibility

and I almost never settle
for just one.

*******

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.

The feather

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

—on the second anniversary of school shutdowns due to COVID-19—

Bleak days. A long, rain-spattered, windswept season, gray as ashes, as stones, just as hard, cold, and immovable. Day to day to day the green promise of spring seems like a dream barely remembered; naked tree branches twist skyward as if beseeching the heavens for renewal…

We go through the motions, automatons numbed by a pandemic not quite past and the ripple effect of unprovoked war on the world stage, as if we’ve somehow fallen through a wormhole to eight decades ago… what year IS this?

I am tired, my colleagues at school tell one another. So tired. Some don’t know if they’re coming back next year. Some don’t know if they’re going to stay in education at all. Our principal is leaving in four weeks.

The children have seemed shell-shocked most of this year. Maybe I seem the same way to them, especially now that masks are optional and I find myself not recognizing some of them; I’ve never seen them without masks before. I don’t know their faces below their eyes.

As I walked the hallways last week, I had a sense of dragging myself over a finish line, except that there is no finish line. Not now, not yet…

But even in the bleakest, rain-spattered, windswept season, when gray goes grayer still, bits of brightness are always swirling. Maybe as tiny as a feather, a soft semiplume shed from a creature with the gift of flight. It might appear to be half one thing and half another… it might have the appearance of dark, wispy, wayward hair as well as a tapered tip dipped in fiery red, altogether like an artist’s brush with which we might, we just might, begin to dispel despair by painting our moments as we will…

So much symbolism in a feather. In the bird that releases it.

It is said that when cardinals appear, angels are near.

I don’t know about that.

I just know a cardinal feather is a symbol of life, hope, and restoration. And courage. And love. And sacrifice…

Falling from the grayest sky
Ethereal, riding the wind
Alluding to nearness of angels
Tiny trace of a nearby cardinal that
Has lost a bit of his insulation
Ephemeral, perhaps, to him
Restorative tincture, to me

Semiplume cardinal feather photographed by my friend,
E. Johnson, 3/11/2022.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.

Dachshund equation

/ Fran Haley / 11 Comments

An equation poem:

1 sweater lying on the bed + 1 dachshund + 1 bad choice = I’m sorry

Visual representation:

1 sweater lying on the bed

1 dachshund

1 bad choice

I’m sorry

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March. And to Dennis, even though he balled up my freshly de-wrinkled sweater. Rascal.