Reflections on the Teche

Poetry Friday round-up is with Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales.

April came to an end on Monday, but my students are still writing a poem a day.  We are in the groove, so to speak, and we did not do all the prompts at The Poem Farm yet.  It was time to write metaphor poems, so we grabbed the idea treasure box and passed it around.  I suggested that the item pulled became the metaphor for the topic.  I pulled out a peacock feather and could only think of my youngest daughter’s blue, blue eyes.

Your eyes
are a peacock feather’s
deepest center blue,
hidden as you
fold into a dream
of who
you plan to be
when your feather
fan opens.

–Margaret Simon (c) 2018.

When we work together writing poems, conversations center around language and metaphor. When Chloe was writing a poem out loud about her favorite topic, cotton candy, Noah said ,”It dissolves in your hand.”  Chloe put that line in her poem.

Pink or Blue
Feels like a soft pillow
dissolving in my hand
Munching and Crunching
as I taste sensational,
sweet
cotton candy.

–Chloe, 2nd grade

Erin addressed her poem to one of her classmates who we were teasing when he stuck the word tree in a poem just to have a rhyming word.  Poetry builds community, even if we are clowning each other.

Tree

The wind rustles through the leaves
As a gentle breeze
Blows by
The bark scratches my hands
As I climb nature’s ladder
Up high the birds are singing
To the beat of the trees
Mother Earth’s Condo
Not a good rhyme though

–Erin, 6th grade

I want to thank Amy VanDerwater for being my co-teacher for poetry month.  I was a little shocked when I clicked over and found she has taken all her Orion poems down.  I understand, but I’m going to miss them.  She hopes to make them into a book which I will look forward to holding one day.