This week in my Watercolor class the lovely Caladium became part of our still life, and my students are all capturing their inviting leaves. I may add another stanza to this poem, haven’t decided yet and also ran short on time…
CALADIUM TIME TRAVEL
Pretty pink elephant ears float light as a pirouette half note, daintily waiting their riverboat entrance of membrance time once wrote…
The Poetry Friday Roundup is here! Please add your posts to Mister Linky below… I’m looking forward to getting around and reading all of your poetry posts throughout the weekend. Friday morning I’ll be teaching and anticipating your poems on my return…
I’m celebrating Father’s Day with a poem for my Dad, which is also a universal poem for Dads and daughters. My dad and I had a close relationship. While I think about him often, I especially like to think about him a bit more around Father’s Day. We were mutual fans of each other, and shared common interests–music, art, nature, politics, and tennis–when we could still both play!
INTERTWINING CONNECTIONS For Dad
Dads and daughters do-si-do round off edges as time goes…˜
Daughters and dads do-si-do kindred passions grow and flow.
Dads and daughters hop, skip, l-e-a-p mingled feelings reach sky-peaks…
Phillis Levin’s poem ANNE FRANK’S HIGH HEELS landed in my email this morning. I liked the distraction the poem offers in the horridness of the war, and as we have a constant barrage of horridness today, I thought I’d share it with you…
ANNE FRANK’S HIGH HEELS by Phillis Levin
When Miep took us home with her She held us up in the air,
Eye-level with those eyes You may know, eyes spelling
I’ve had a week off between my Spring and Summer Teaching. So, morning Light and I played with words, and momentarily camouflaged the ever present din that seems to wrap around us…
I woke with a poem line and followed the line into
my bedroom which has a bay in it with two angled window walls…
My bay shades are mostly shut, and what’s behind lies in your mind wherever you may go…
On sunny morns light breaks in behind the shade and calls me out of bed. When overcast and dreary, sleepy light invites slumber through peculiar morning dreams.
Yet clear or clouds there’s almost always birdsong, beyond those image–creating bays
and multi-layer story-songs sift through those window bays.
Here’s a new postcard turned Birthday card I just posted in my Etsy Shop, especially for folks with June Birthdays. And many thanks to Carol Varsalona who was looking for a fairy card for her granddaughter!
Buffy Silverman at her blog Buffy Silverman Children’s Author is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup, thanks Buffy! Buffy’s written a poem about a favorite wildflower of hers… stop on by to see what it is and check out many more poetry blogs.
Get your creative juices flowing, Come join one of my Summer Art Classes Starting the week of June 13, 2022 I’m offering both In-person and Online classes at theEvanston Art Center 1717 Central Street, Evanston, IL All classes meet 9:30 am – 12:30 pm For more Info & To Register online click on the link for class below or call 847-475-5300
Whoa, Taking a breath from this past week, and sending out healing prayers…
I scribbled away a few poems in response to the shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. I like so many others are still taking this horrific tragedy in. I offer my sketch and haiku above as a prayer for the children and teachers… and all the lives they connect with.
buttercups, sunbeams of love with leaf-filled feathery support…
This month the Poetry Sister’s prompt was to write a poem on string, rope, or chain. Thanks to all Tanita, Mary Lee, Laura, Liz, Andi, Sara, and Tricia. And to find more of these poems look for them tagged with #PoetryPals. Twine reached out to me and I followed her lead…
IMAGINATION
Meander garden twine twist and wind like a silent serpent sleuthing by. Watch it climb high toward sky wrapping vines guiding vines over and around as they rise.
Meander garden twine twist and wind create contour levitating lines. Let twine lead you off your line into a new imagine-filled time…
While the world turned itself upside down again, and the U.S. has another elementary school mass shooting, now in Uvalde, Texas–leaving so many of us shaken and wondering when this will stop—My college daughter gets Covid, and my out-of-college son talks with his girlfriend of moving to Canada…
I scan my phone emails and skim over the NYT’s The Morning recap on why the U.S. is an outlier for mass shootings, and read poem-a-day Terisa Siagatonu’s probing poem, THE ONLY PLACE IN THE U.S. WITH ZERO COVID DEATHS…
I try meditating but my focus falls short …
change u.s. gun laws place children before profit make schools safe NOW
I also want to share Terisa Siagatonu’s poem, The Only Place in the U.S. with Zero COVID Deaths, from the Academy of American Poets poem-a-day. Take a minute to listen to her reading and the “About this Poem,” all moved me.
Linda Mitchell at her blog A Word Edgewise is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup, thanks Linda! She has a powerful poem about the School Shooting, be sure to stop by.
My poems today come from Margaret Simon’s post yesterday, for This Photo Wants to be a Poem. Thanks Margaret for taking time to stop on your way to teach, and capture this photo for all of us to ponder! And there’s a bevy of handsome poems on Margaret’s site too. My response poem is below, though I thought I’d include an image of where our Susie’s are in Chicago… They’re not quite as far along, but they’re working hard, hence my image and haiku above.
Country barn with black-eyed Susan wildflowers, photo by Margaret Simon
FARMFIELD WILDFLOWER’S
Look close, even closer… Feel Black-eyed Suzie’s lace-feathery edge dance ‘round Burnt sienna old barn, and kiss her dried out edges as she playfully moves up and down barns sun-warming facade creating her dense golden-crown mass among field’s tree-lined horizon…
Look still closer… Cross a patch of sap green grass for one more grand mass of Suzie’s golden grandeur, dotted with deep warm-brown variegated heads moving our eye this way and that like a group of chattering school girls who take our breath away with their uninhibited natural beauty. Gatitudinal thanks, Grand Suzie’s.
I heard on NPR’s 1A, with host Jenn White, an interview with Jelani Cobb, who was just appointed as the incoming Dean at Columbia School of Journalism, and will begin this endeavor later this summer. And also Kelly McBride, she’s one of NPR’s Public Editors “and Chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at The Poynter Institute.” They were talking about the shootings that just occurred last week in Buffalo NY. Someone brought up, “news coverage has been neutral” and “especially on public radio.” A discussion of “neutral harbingers of situations” began, and I added a couple of words to their discussion, Are we neutral harbingers of racial divisive situations—I think a poem is rolling around in there…The NPR 1A above, is a link to a podcast of the interview. Cobb also mentioned a book I’m going to check out, A Field Guide to White Supremacy, by Kathleen Belew.
Sending thoughts and prayers to all involved last week and hopes for actions of change to come soon.
Carmela Martino at her joint-authored blog Teaching Authors, is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup, thanks Carmela—Be sure to stop by for your fill of poetry!
When Dandy Dandelion wakes And combs his yellow hair, The ant his cup of dewdrop takes And sets his bed to air; The worm hides in a quilt of dirt To keep the thrush away, The beetle dons his pansy shirt— They know that it is day!
And caterpillars haste to milk The cowslips in the grass; The spider, in his web of silk, Looks out for flies that pass.
Here’s DakhaBrakha, a Ukrainian band who, continue to perform and spread their eclectic, often hypnotizing, moving music, and culture. There’s also a brief interview, by KEXP, with the band at the end of their performance. I continue to keep all Ukrainians close to my heart.
Rose Cappelli at her blog Imagine the Possibilities is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup, thanks Rose—Be sure to stop by and fill up on more poetry!
I’m starting my celebration of Mother’s Day today, with a socially conscious Mother’s Day Poem! Breathe in some action, take a few flowers, and celebrate all Mom’s in a marvelous way!
Give Flowers,
Flowers for mothers Flowers for mentors Mentors whose voices have cried out for justice Vincent Millay, Levertov, Angelou, Brooks, Ukraine Mothers burying their sons… Pink and purple, passion filled colors, Blazing sunflowers, stir our hearts, Candid coneflowers ooze ochre truths, Climate change greens sequestering carbon intertwine thoughts and generate action with Mother of Nature nurture, protector, with Mother of Suffrage, of 1960s who bodily fought for our bodies rights. Flowers for mothers Petals of love, pass through generations Flowers For Mothers
Here’s part of a conversation Maya Angelou had with her mother, from the Article, Maya Angelou on Mothers, ABC News, Aril 29, 2008.
“When Angelou was 21 and a young mother, she was holding down two jobs and living on her own. One day, she went to her mother’s house and received some unexpected praise.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘Baby, you know at this minute I want to tell you something.’ She has fox furs on, silver fox furs, and diamond earrings,” Angelou said. “She said, ‘I think you’re the greatest woman I’ve ever met.’ She said, ‘There is of course Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother. But you’re in that category.'”
“And I thought, ‘Suppose she’s right? Suppose I really am somebody?’ She used to say she was too mean to lie. And she was very intelligent. But maybe it’s about time for me to stop smoking and stop cursing, ’cause I may be somebody.”
Angelou was working on a cable car at the time, and was far from the famous woman she would become, but her mother’s words gave her a sense of her future.
“I have learned enough now, to know I have learned nearly nothing,” she read in another excerpt from her new book. “Only stay when mothers are being honored. Let me thank you, that my selfishness, ignorance and mockery did not bring you to describe me like a broken doll, which had lost its favor. I thank you that you still find something in me to cherish, to admire and to love.”
Hope you can get lost in nature for a bit this week…
🌸 Happy Mother’s Day to all Mom’s! 🌷 (including humans, flora & fauna)
Jama Rattigan at her blog Jama’s Alphabet Soup is our delectable host for this week’s Poetry Friday Round up, thanks Jama! She’s served up a scrumptious post including a Mother’s Day recipe poem by Anita Pulier, along with some mouth watering treats, so be sure to stop by and fill up with poetry!
Well, here we are… What an adventurous romp this years Progressive Poem has been. Many thanks to Irene Latham who began the Progressive Poem and Margaret Simon who is continuing on with it!
Wayback when, we began without maps, dipped into spring’s puddle-wonderful, saw birds, did dancing, singing, moon-slicing, even heard some chattering monkeys. Nature kept on coming– nettles and sky, gardens, libraries, lightning bugs, oh my… More birds, surfing rivers of wind, wonderful–magical and sometimes confusing, and then…one last dance– And now…
My lines at the bottom in italics…
Alas, I am teaching a Poetry and Art Workshop on this last day of National Poetry Month, and will catch up with comments later in the day. (or peek at them with my students.)
THE PROGRESSIVE POEM OF 2022, SO HERE IT IS:
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.
It was all so wonderful and so magical that sometimes I got a little confused by my adventures.
I feel like waving… like dancing around on the road
But, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
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. 28. The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis 29. adapted from “So This is Nebraska” from Sure Signs: New & Selected Poems by Ted Kooser 30. adapted from “The House At Pooh Corner” by A. A. Milne
Jone Rush MacCulloch is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, Jone Rush MacCulloch. She has a treasure trove of bubbling poetry goodness to offer, so do stop by her post.
Yikes… the Progressive Poem is quickly coming to it’s conclusion, and will be doing that right here on my post tomorrow, Saturday, April 30th. I’m including a list of the stops below.
Whoah! where did this month g-o-o-o-o-! Well wherever it skedaddled off to I did have fun with this challenging poetry prompt from the Poetry Sisters to create a metaphor dice poem in the style of Taylor Mali. Many Thanks to you all, Tanita, Mary Lee, Laura, Liz, Andi, Sara, and Tricia. And to find more of these poems look for them tagged with #PoetryPals. My poem’s path lead me on a more serious route… And my words from the metaphor dice are: Loss/Flawed/Lens.
HEED EARTH’S CRY
Loss closes a flawed lens of ill-managed, missed opportunities for earth’s climate, racing to survive.
Ouch, hurry— We can still help, and keep our earth’s celsius temps from climbing even higher.
Overwhelming–Yes— Take one baby step: Visit: UNEP United Nations Environment Programme find different ways to help. Take one more baby step, Visit an offshoot of UNEP: Count Us In And pick a project to begin. Download a copy of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Yes, it’s long, skim it, ponder it, read parts.
I’m like you– Your average overwhelmed individual. But hey, we can do this together. Remember—Take one baby step, Go For It cause, we only have ONE EARTH!
One parting thought… Avian Bird-flu is spreading through different parts of the US. It’s been recommended in my area Chicago, that we unfortunately stop feeding and providing birdbaths until at least the end of May. They don’t think it’s affecting songbirds, but they want us to help out to keep the flu from growing and getting even larger. I read that it’s okay to have your hummingbird feeders out though. I look forward to replacing water for the birds when I can. Here’s a link to an article specific to Illinois: “Take Down Bird Feeders, Baths Until Threat of Bird Flu Passes, Illinois Wildlife Officials Say”
Michelle Kogan Illustration, Painting, & Writing 