The yearly holiday poem swap is organized by Tabatha Yeatts. She graciously matches poet to poet. This year my exchange was with Sally Murphy , children’s book author living in Australia.
Imagine my surprise when shortly after Thanksgiving break, full of family and food with little time to think about poetry, I received Sally’s adorable verse novel Queen Narelle. Narelle is a queenly cat. I have one of those. Her name is Fancy which fits her well. I immediately connected with Narelle and Maddie, her girl.
Then there were cute koala sticky notes. And her card to me was a poem “My Country” by Dorothea MacKellar (1885-1968) that begins “The love of field and coppice” and ends with “My homing thoughts will fly.” Such a beautiful ode to Australia. You can read about Dorothea and see the handwritten poem here.
Sally’s poem for me:
Margaret
She notices beauty
Sally Murphy
even in the dark.
Shares it
to spread joy
or moments of peace
or a reminder
to breathe
be still
reflect.
Purposefully
nurturing herself
nurturing me
nurturing the world.
I hold this sweet poem in my hands and feel grateful for being seen in such a loving way. I wanted to respond to Sally by seeing her. I had not put together anything for her yet, so I took a look at her Instagram and found a post about how she could not close the cupboard for all the to-be-read books inside. She called it an “inevitable bookavalanche.”
For Sally
I found you
Margaret Simon
under a book avalanche
where you were happily
absorbing
word upon words
story upon stories
filling your cupboard
with timeless treasures.
Visit this link to WhisperShout magazine to read two of my students’ poems. Thanks, Heidi for selecting them for Issue #12.
Reflections on the Teche 