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| Unsplash Photo by Steve Johnson |
Saying Goodbye
The storage unit is pitch black.
The boxes
are stacked right where we left them. I kick one with my shoe
and wonder what I’m going to do with these boxes
once I get them home. There will be new
piles of boxes
in our basement. I’d rather have you
back than all these memories stuffed into boxes.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018
This Golden Shovel was written for the March 2018 Ditty Challenge using part of a line of a poem by Devon Hope. I wrote it to remind myself that I can write in this form. (I wrote one last April for Malvina Reynolds.) I wrote it because of my poem-a-day challenge for April (coming up at the speed of time). When I began my "sort of a Slice of Life Challenge but not really" for March, I hadn't decided what I'd do for my Poetry Month challenge. I was talking to my students about the goals and challenges writers set for themselves and one of them laid down the gauntlet. Our classroom family has since grown from 29 to 30, so...why not. I've never in my career had 30 students (never again, please), so why not write a poem about each child? Never one to make things easy for myself, I've had each student choose a quote that resonates with him/her.
In April, I will write a Golden Shovel for/about each of my 30 students using the quote they chose as the poem's "striking line."
