Azure skies, an occasional gift
Upwelling storm clouds, dark and ominous
Gills are needed to breathe in humid southern climes
Undulating lines of heat
Snaking along the horizon
Too hot for returning to school
Intense, moody month.
Photo: erie august sky 6. totempolar. CC BY-SA 2.0.
A friend who knows my affinity for the natural world gave me The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times. It’s written as a conversation between Jane Goodall and her interviewer, Douglas Abrams. When I say it’s part of my current “light reading” I don’t mean easy (although it is) or frivolous (for it is not).
I mean light as in candleglow dancing on the walls of a dark room.
I’ve not gotten far yet but here are some lines that draw me in the first couple of chapters—flickerings of my own credo:
Hope is a survival trait.
The naturalist looks for the wonder of nature – she listens to the voice of nature and learns from it as she tries to understand it.
Hope does not deny all the difficulty and all the danger that exists, but is not stopped by them. There’s a lot of darkness, but our actions create the light.
And this from an Inuit elder, on confronting and healing our grief, which can manifest itself in the body as physical pain: Make space for grief…find awe and joy in every day.
—these, I believe. They are often the very reason why I write.
Recipe for Survival
Hold onto hope, and it will hold you
Open the ears, eyes, arms of your spirit
Perceive the call of awe, all around
Embrace it. Let the healing begin.
Look at my mane! Look at my teeth!
I‘m a most magnificent beast!
Only, Little Artist, could you at least
Name me and draw me a body beneath?
“Lion’s Mane” by Scout, age 6.
To me the lion seems quite happy to have been drawn thus far.
Although its expression might be a little sketchy...
Photo: A Funeral Flag… Beverly & Pack. CC BY
Service.
Active.
Courage.
Remember
Incalculable
Fidelity,
Indebted
Country.
Epitaph.
an acrostic
First glimmerings
In the gloaming
Rekindle ancient
Enchantments:
Fairies freewriting with
Lazy punctuation
Inkglow illuminating individual
Evening essays containing
Secret spells, summoning summer
Firefly. Mr.k_Taiwan. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Firefly symbolism is also enchanting. In China, fireflies are associated with scholars studying at night.
Overlords of sea and sky
Sunward soaring, unafraid
Precise piscivore pair
Riding the winds with
Easy grace
You see and seize the moment
Osprey pair. Photo by my friend E. Johnson.
“Fierce beauty,” as Sy Montgomery would say.
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
—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.
an acrostic
The Artist’s Inner Dialogue
Today is a
Happy day
I feel it as I
Skip along the sidewalk
I feel like making
Something beautiful with
All kinds of colors
Red orange yellow green blue
And my favorites,
Indigo and violet…
Now I leave my happy beautifulness
By way of chalkdust
Or maybe fairydust
Where you can find it, too
Photo: Margaret Simon. “This Photo Wants to be a Poem,” Reflections on the Teche.
Thank you for the inspiration, Margaret.
On the last day of the February Open Write at Ethical ELA, Britt Decker invites participants to write a poem based on a picture book, taking inspiration from beautiful lines, illustrations, or theme.
My little acrostic is inspired by Inky’s Amazing Escape: How a Very Smart Octopus Found His Way Home, by Sy Montgomery (a true story).
*******
The Long-Reaching Tentacle of Adaptability
“Sometimes the keeper gave Inky toys. Inky liked to take apart LEGO blocks, and put them back together. He liked playing with Mr. Potato Head. One time, with his suckers, he pulled off Mr. Potato Head’s eyes and handed them to the starfish in his tank.”
Once upon a time, a
Child yearned
To understand why
Others seem such a
Puzzle
Until she learned
She didn’t have to solve them.
From Inky’s Amazing Escape: How a Very Smart Octopus Found His Way Home, written by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Amy Schimler-Safford. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, New York, 2018.
I am in awe of octopuses. Inky’s story is etched on my heart. There’s something so poignant to me in his giving Mr. Potato Head’s eyes to the starfish.
lit bits and pieces 