I am writing from my favorite perch on the back deck on Bayou Teche. While I was here, Laura Shovan’s face popped up on my phone inviting me to an Instagram Live. Little did I know that she could actually click me in. Ha! There I was, no make up, saying hi to Laura! She was reading a robot poem. Y’all should check it out!
My poem today was inspired by a prompt on Go Poems using Joy Harjo’s poem When the World as We Knew it Ended as a mentor text. I posted on our Kidblog page and a few students wrote their own poems. (We welcome comments.)
When School was Closed
We were writing
every day in colored ink:
100 Days of Notebooking goal.
Sticker charts were filling up
like a calendar of events:
Twenty books, thirty, forty.
We were wild readers
racking up the highest AR scores.
We had been watching
the President in news conferences
say “This is no big deal, a few weeks,
warmer weather, it’ll all go away.”
We saw it when
our parents stayed home, too,
buying supplies for more than a week,
taking our temperature with their hands.
We heard it
from Governor Edwards,
“Stay at home.”
No more school.
Will I ever see my friends again?
What about the soccer game on Saturday?
But then my dad
took me fishing,
showed me how to bait a hook,
slowly helped me throw out the line.
We waited
side by side
together
for a bite.
By Margaret Simon
The Spreading Virus
We were getting off the school bus
when he said bye
see you in a month or two
A game of pass the toy
going from here to there.
Until that person has it no more.
We had been watching the passing fields.
stopping every couple of minutes
Barely any cars
driving around
No strangers walking around
outside
still playing games
learning new things
being with the family.
We heard it has claimed lives, many
Must keep everything germ-free
Can’t go see our friends anymore
But then
it is nice being home
this is bringing families together
having to spend
more time
with each
other
by Breighlynn, 4th grade
Follow the progress of this year’s Progressive Poem. We are walking a path to the lake. Matt Forrest Esenwine has today’s line choices.
1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at A Journey through the Pages
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Bigi
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan
Reflections on the Teche 
You and Breighlyn are good writing partners! I like how your poem shows that there is some good to be found in this weird time. Fishing with Dad sounds fun.
I took the idea from one of my students’ slices.
I think both poems are therapeutic for the writer and the reader. Good comparison of how it was and how it is now. I love how both poems end positively, finding a silver lining! Great job of changing mood in both poems! Please tell Breighlynn thank you for her great, uplifting poem!
What strikes me in both poems is the struggle to grasp and the adjustments, to a point of settling in. And mourning over not seeing friends. Family, stillness, sadness. It is a long temporariness.
Both of these poems capture the ways it seems the world as we knew it has ended, and both also have hope for goodness that can grow from it.
Whirling from what used to be into what is now, the good things that happen like family time as Breighlyn wrote and then the close activities that often don’t happen because of ‘no time’. I love that “We waited/side by side/together”, Margaret. Ah, changes!
Both poems capture the changes that are happening and how things will never quite be the same, but yet are hopeful and positive. The structure follows the mentor poem so well. Thank you for also including the link to that one.
So much good if we bother to look for it!
Beautiful and wise. You are teaching much more than poetry, Margaret. Much love and health to you and your family and students. xx
I didn’t go to read it yet, but Joy Harjo’s poem must be excellent if it could bring out yours and Breighlyn’s poems so beautifully! There is the uncertainty and the longing in each, and then the turn to what IS there, what can be silver lining. Thank you for sharing!
Okay now I’ve read it and WOW, just wow, and I see how powerful. THANK YOU for pointing me to that poem, Margaret!
Inspiring poetry x 2 = this post. (x 3 if we add in Joy Harjo’s poem) Thank you. 🙂
One of the things that I think parents and teachers are finding so difficult (or at least *I* am finding difficult) is that, because this crisis is so new to all of us, children are finding out that adults don’t have all the answers. There’s nothing I’d like more than to tell my daughter when this will all be over, but I don’t know. Nobody does. All we can do is be there for them, to go fishing, to play a game, to present an opportunity to write poetry, or just to quietly listen. Thanks for the comforting post, Margaret.