Imagine

Imagine

the silent bubble of April

twirling

over garden, 

over nest.

Follow.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Haikubes With Hem

my balance calls

I slowly return home 

the glorious next

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Hem is sad to see Poetry Month drawing to a close. He'll miss stealing haikubes from the pile and batting them underneath the couch. And they are so fun to lay on while Mom is trying to choose just the right ones. But how come she can bat them around with her paws, but I get in trouble for the same thing, Hem wonders. 

I am also sad to see Poetry Month coming to an end. Sad, and yet needing all my time and energy to focus on "the glorious next" of May in 5th grade. My balance will just have to keep calling until the end of the month. That's the way this gig works. Wouldn't have it any other way.  

The Key to Happiness: Some Food for Thought

Today's challenge:
One randomly drawn prompt
and one randomly drawn paint chip.

The Key to Happiness: Some Food for Thought

You want everything to be plum perfect?
I'm here to tell you you're as likely to get a lemon

as you are a piece of cake.

You might be the big cheese,

and as cool as a cucumber,

but you'll still get your goose cooked now and then.

Take this with a grain of salt

or take this like candy from a baby --

the key to happiness is

not worth a hill of beans

unless the fruit of your labors 

is a bowl of cherries 

that you are willing 

to share.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Found

Found

Squirrels
nip the tips
off branches.

You can tell
because the cut
is slanted.

The size of oak's leaves
has doubled
in a week.

Some are cupped
(to receive sun?)
all are fuzzy.

Look at the table.
This is how shade happens in spring:
suddenly.


©Mary Lee Hahn



None of the usual poetry tools today, just this twig in a glass on the kitchen table.

A Lazy Symphony

A Lazy Symphony

so much depends
upon

a delicate spring
moment

languid with sweet
beauty

a lazy symphony of
flowers


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


This is another "cross-out" poem, an idea shared by Laura Shovan in her Nerdy Book Club Poetry Month FB event. I wrote one inspired by Emily Dickinson last Sunday. This one was inspired by William Carlos Williams' Red Wheelbarrow.

Carol V. has this week's Poetry Friday Roundup at Beyond LiteracyLink.

And Then on Top of Everything Else

And Then on Top of Everything Else (a teacher's rant)

Let's set the stage--
the calendar page
hasn't turned to May
yet every single day

is filled to the brim
and you're drowning, can't swim,
got to keep the momentum
and don't even mention

paperwork
meetings
testing
talent show
field trip
author visit
summer reading.

On top of all that
(magnify the impact)
the impossible curse of your body:
you're sick.
(Pass the toddy.)


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

New Little Tree

We added a new member to our garden family on Earth Day. Welcome, Cranberry Viburnum! Nature's first green is sometimes red!

I accidentally left all my poetry tools at school, but luckily, there's Magnetic Poetry Online! Here's a haiku for our new little tree:

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Uncle Bob -- A Prose Poem

A jumble of memories

Uncle Bob was not my uncle. He was my dad's cousin, but the closest thing to family we had. He also was not a cowboy, but if you saw his slow, bow-legged saunter, his cowboy hat, his blue jeans and western snap-fasten shirts, that's what you might think. You wouldn't know by looking that he was the canniest dry-land farmer in the Great Plains of Eastern Colorado. He was born and raised in the part of Colorado without mountain peaks and rich soil. His landscape was wide and flat and dry. Dirt roads with thistle in the ditches marked the edges of native grassland pasture and wheat fields. Uncle Bob had a deep understanding of the land he farmed, never succumbing to "the grass is greener" mentality of irrigation. He was a dry-land farmer whose harvest depended on the land and the weather. There were good years with enough moisture, and plenty of years with dust devils and tumbleweeds before the rain came...or didn't come. In the summer, many a cumulonimbus cloud appeared on the horizon, only to take its rain elsewhere, but perhaps also its hail. A winter blizzard was a mixed blessing of wind that carried topsoil away and brought moisture that did or didn't cover the fields to nourish the winter wheat. Uncle Bob secured his success by collaborating with the land and the climate, but he allied with another of the vast natural resources of Eastern Colorado for his final venture -- harvesting the wind with graceful lines of enormous turbines.

In my mind, it is night. I stand in the dusty yard where I played as a child, rusty tractors along the fence, the Milky Way a bright smear across the impossibly dark sky. Uncle Bob is in it all -- land, sky, and wind.

Not Giant...Yet

I count baby oak leaves among the cutest of spring's babies. It's hard to imagine that these fragile fingertip-length leaves will be bigger than my whole hand by the middle of June. And the photosynthetic glucose factory inside each one of them...don't even get me started on that miracle.

There's a new Rhino in town, a watering can rhino, and she helped me write a haiku for the baby oak leaves.

your glorious life

grand, gorgeous -- so not giant

sweet home for my heart

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

To Make a Forest

Flickr Creative Commons Photo 

To Make a Forest, After Emily Dickinson

To make a forest it takes one spring and eternity,
The delicate goddess of this spring mist and one enormous eternity.
Plus moments.
The sweet moments alone will do,
If eternity is few.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


This is a "cross-out" poem, an idea shared by Laura Shovan in her Nerdy Book Club Poetry Month FB event.

It is also a magnetic poetry poem. Thank goodness FOREST was right on top in the box!

Happy Birthday, Franki!

For Franki, On Her Birthday

You are an unspoken blessing to the teaching profession.
Your advocacy is a not-so-silent promise that all voices will be heard.
I know you are reluctant to accept the trophy of our accolades,
but where would we be without your impossible-to-ignore drumbeat of excellence?


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Springtime Alarm Clock

Springtime Alarm Clock

Supposedly, time is a gentle songbird,
but someone forgot to tell
the robin outside my window
in the predawn darkness
who is singing jazz riffs
that would make Charlie Parker proud.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


Here is my metaphor:

And here is Charlie Parker, who I chose randomly, but just learned is Charles ("Bird") Parker.




Amy has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at The Poem Farm. She knows all about Everyday Birds and their alarm clock tendencies!

After the Fire

After the Fire

The images of smoke and ash
spread from screen to screen around the globe.

As the loss of an ancient cultural treasure was mourned
by those who had experienced the holiness there
and by those who now would not,

a pair of girls enjoying a sunny recess in Ohio
searched the soccer field
for four-leaf clover,
eventually finding seven lucky clusters.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Pluck

The classroom stuffed animals wanted to get in on the Haikube scene. Why should Hem and Rhino have all the fun? On the left is the hamster from Laura Shovan's book The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, in the middle is a camel one of my Egyptian students gave me, and on the right is Grumpy Bird. They watched last week while their small humans took the Language Arts state test, and the classroom is now ready (all math charts hidden or removed) for the Math portion of the state test. They know how hard their small humans have been working, and they wanted to write a poem to encourage them.

realize sweet grace

you hold dynamic marvel

you have pluck enough

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Spring's Yellow

Spring's Yellow

Spring's

yellow

follows

winter's 

blue

bringing 

pink 

peace.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Poetry is a Burning Blessing

Poetry is a Burning Blessing

your pen -- the matchstick;

ideas -- tinder, kindling, fuel;

poetry -- the fire

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Playing With Poetry -- With FIRST Graders!

I Went to the Mexican Store

I saw
rainbow vegetables.
But
the best part was
a pepper
reading a book!

©1st Grade, 2019

Holy Moly! First graders at the end of the day on Friday still have SO much energy and SO much creativity! Hats off to all the first grade teachers in the world! 

We were writing a 15 Words or Less poem and we had WAY too many words. One little girl took out four boring words ("green, purple, and striped") and replaced them with one juicy one -- "rainbow." Brilliant! You have to look closely at the top right corner of the picture to see the pepper reading a book. It's a green pepper in the corner of a cardboard box, but when you see it through first grade eyes, it sure is a pepper reading a book!

Playing With Poetry -- With MORE Second Graders!

Pink Piglets in a Pen

You think I'm dirty.

I DO love

rolling in mud

but

I bathe in hay.

©2nd Grade, 2019

Another great group of young poets, and look at all we packed into that poem! Alliteration! Rhyme! Juicy word choices!

Poetry Friday: Playing With Poetry...With Second Graders!

The second grade team at my school has invited me to visit their classes as the "Visiting Poet" for their Poetry Month poetry writing unit. So. Much. Fun!

Yesterday, after I elaborated on what a poet actually does (lots of reading, lots of rewriting) and where I get my ideas (everywhere), we wrote a 15 Words Or Less poem together.

Our prompt was a picture of tire tracks in snow.

Our first draft was too long, so I shared my sneaky trick of using one of the lines as the title to reduce the word count. 

We wound up with this:

Today Might Be a Snow Day

The cars

make diagonal tracks

in the sparkly snow

from 

dusk to dawn.

©2nd Grade, 2019

It seemed ludicrous to be writing about a snow day when the temperatures here in Ohio hit the 80s today for the first time this season, but I know our friends in Denver and the upper midwest are dealing with Winter Storm Wesley, which will likely downgrade to lots of rain for us in the coming days.

Irene has this week's Poetry Friday Roundup at Live Your Poem.

Haiku for Hem

Hem didn't come running when I dumped the Haikubes tonight, so Rhino and I worked alone. Our haiku might not seem very flattering, but it's the honest truth. Hem is a rescue cat, and we're pretty sure he was taken too soon from his mother, causing him to miss out on some important early socialization lessons. He plays REALLY rough. He's ruthless. His favorite games involve trying to bite your hand when you pet him, biting your pants leg, and jumping human shoulder-height (after getting those wild tiger eyes) to try to bite the hand you are holding out. One of his nicknames is Mr. Bitey. Hem is a strikingly beautiful cat, but he's drawn blood from both of us many times, resulting in us calling him worse than simply a jerk. He is, however, quite the Daddy's Boy, and he is always able to charm his way back onto AJ's lap.

wild tiger eyes

wicked gleeful biting jerk

charm peace with the man

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Promise and Power

Like the green of spring,

poetry is a promise

unspoken, yet heard.

(And on the flip side,

power is a glorified mirror.

Enough said.)

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

The Progressive Poem is Here!

Here is the poem so far:

Endless summer; I can see for miles…
Fun, fun, fun – and the whole world smiles
No time for school- just time to play
we swim the laughin’ sea each and every day
You had only to rise, lean from your window,
the curtain opens on a portrait of today:
Kodachrome greens, dazzling blue

Before we get to my line, let me just say that this whole idea of a children's poem created with lines found in songs has made me shake in my shoes. It's been a lifetime ago that I listened to music with words. Our radios are tuned to the classical stations. My ride to and from school is narrated by audio books.

When I got Ruth's line, though, I decided to quit being intimidated and just give it a whirl. Dan Fogelberg was my favorite poet-singer in the day, so I pulled out the two CD Innocent Age album and took a trip down memory lane, looking for what else might be outside that window on a summer day. I didn't have to look far.

Endless summer; I can see for miles…
Fun, fun, fun – and the whole world smiles
No time for school- just time to play
we swim the laughin’ sea each and every day
You had only to rise, lean from your window,
the curtain opens on a portrait of today:
Kodachrome greens, dazzling blue
it's the chance of a lifetime


Found Lines:
L1 The Who, ‘I Can See for Miles’ / The Beach Boys, ‘Endless Summer’
L2 The Beach Boys, ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ / Dean Martin, ‘When You’re Smiling’
L3 The Jamies, ‘Summertime, Summertime’
L4 The Doors ‘Summer’s Almost Gone’/ Led Zeppelin ‘Good Times, Bad Times’
L5 Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine “You had only to rise, lean from your window,”
L6 Joni Mitchell, “Chelsea Morning”

L7 Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," "Dazzling Blue"

L8 Dan Fogelberg, "Run for the Roses"


And now, I hand the poem off to the capable pen and musical ear of Rebecca at Sloth Reads!

Check out the back stories and process notes to date and watch the poem progress:

1 Matt @ Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme
2 Kat @ Kathryn Apel
3 Kimberly @ KimberlyHutmacherWrites
4 Jone @ DeoWriter
5 Linda @ TeacherDance
6 Tara @ Going to Walden
7 Ruth @ thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown
8 Mary Lee @ A Year of Reading
9 Rebecca @ Rebecca Herzog
10 Janet F. @ Live Your Poem
11 Dani @ Doing the Work that Matters
12 Margaret @ Reflections on the Teche
13 Doraine @ Dori Reads
14 Christie @ Wondering and Wandering
15 Robyn @ Life on the Deckle Edge
16 Carol @ Beyond LiteracyLink
17 Amy @ The Poem Farm
18 Linda @ A Word Edgewise
19 Heidi @ my juicy little universe
20 Buffy @ Buffy's Blog
21 Michelle @ Michelle Kogan
22 Catherine @ Reading to the Core
23 Penny @ a penny and her jots
24 Tabatha @ The Opposite of Indifference
25 Jan @ Bookseedstudio
26 Linda @ Write Time
27 Sheila @ Sheila Renfro
28 Liz @ Elizabeth Steinglass
29 Irene @ Live Your Poem
30 Donna @ Mainely Write

Light, Peace, Joy

Light, Peace, Joy

Yes, light is a peace of joy.
And so is the single daffodil at the base of the oak.

Yes, light is a piece of joy.
Sun streaming through the blinds onto the kitchen table.

In piece, we dazzle.
In peace, we glow.

Joy.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


(Prompt provided by one of my students.)

Blessings and Curses

Last Friday, I put out the poetry tools I've been using for this year's NPM challenge and let my students test drive them.

Magnetic Poetry

Paint Chip Poetry

Haikubes

What a blessing I received! Leave it to 10- and 11-year-olds to remind me how to really PLAY with these "tools!"

They didn't have time to draft full poems...all except this guy, who asked for permission not to switch stations so he could finish a poem, which turned out to be a heart-wrenching tribute to his mother on the theme of "appreciate what you've got while you've got it."

Other blessings I received as I played alongside them were snippets of poetry they gave me permission to borrow. Yesterday's metaphor was created by our class' member of the school dodgeball team. The competition was last night (they wound up holding onto their championship for the third year in a row) and he was thinking more literally about curveballs than I was! I have a line of magnetic poetry to work from for tomorrow's poem, and today's poem started at the paint chip table. A quiet sweetie showed her spunky side by pairing these:

That got me going on curses. I made a few of my own while we played, and then this morning, I took a page from my students' PLAYbook and dumped out all the paint chip cards on the kitchen table to find more.

I jotted them in my notebook, then went to my Merriam-Webster app and jotted down all the synonyms for CURSE.

Malediction Incantation

I curse you
with cheese puffs in your eyes!

May there be a muddy puddle pox
on your blue suede shoes!

I bestow a hex of sticky nectar
in your genie lamp!

A plague on your bright ideas --
may they slip away like quicksilver!

May your bull's-eye be blighted by
tumbleweeds

and your starship be scourged by
rust!

Your happy ending? May it be jinxed
by an unforeseen
deep
end.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Memory Throws a Last-Minute Curveball

Memory Throws a Last-Minute Curveball

your name, the punchline,
why I'm standing in this room --
all veer out of reach

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Haikubes with Hem (and Rhino)

Rhino wanted in on the act this time. But just like the last times, the minute I dumped the Haikubes on the carpet, Hem came at a gallop.

He and Rhino worked amiably to help me pick out my cubes.

Almost ready!

I found a poem that's a wish for sleep tonight. I made the mistake of drinking a cup of hot tea after school yesterday, and I woke up with a busy brain at 2:00 AM. I read for an hour, then only dozed until the alarm went off just before 5:00. Please come, honest sleep. Bring me grace!

This first week back after spring break was ridiculously hard. I just couldn't get caught up enough with school work and writing my own poems to get out and visit much. Finally, on Wednesday, I got our Poetry in the Halls posters put up. It's so fun to have many of my Poetry Friday peeps on the walls in our building's hallways!

Karen has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Karen Edmisten: The Blog with the Shockingly Clever Title.

Up

UP

The optimism of cream --
rising.

The power of frog legs --
leaping.

The cheer of sunny sides --
inspiring.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Time

Time

Is time an organized file
brimming with figures and facts?

Or is time a play in the theater
with lines and scenes and acts?

Is time a glorified drum
beating the rhythm of life?

Or is time a well-honed blade
cutting through age like a scythe?


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019

Idiom-osophy

I have lots of magnetics to choose from for my Magnetic Poetry play day. I got a little crazy and chose one word from every bag. I'm not going to do that again!

people, teacher, ball, stare, yesterday, everlasting, catches the worm

Idiom-osophy

History catches the worm
in an everlasting dance with destiny
while Future's teacher gets the ball rolling
past crowds of people
who simply stand
and
stare.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019