Photo by Juan German, provided by Janet Fagal. East side Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, N.Y. 2002.
Today’s photo is obviously more professional than the ones I usually post from my own iPhone. Janet Fagel sent this photo from a photographer friend. Such a rich photo to focus on. Being in New York, it is most likely sunrise. I see some paw prints in the snow. The tree’s shape is intriguing. What will you find here?
I’m still on my elfchen a day kick, but feel free to write any small poem form (or free verse) that comes to you. The important thing is to write and share and respond.
Willow unburdened, bent leans to light reaching for its offer Life
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
H. D. Thoreau from 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Precepts
Notebook Musings:
Can kindness be taught? How does someone reach out in kindness? We worry so much about impressions. Small talk drives our relationships: How are you doing? We don’t stand still long enough to hear, really hear the answer.
Naomi Shihab Nye wrote, “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,/ you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” I believe this, yes. I also believe that if you want a child to be kind, you must practice kindness. I hope my grandchildren learn this from me.
I received two messages yesterday that warmed my heart. My middle daughter wrote, “Thomas said, ‘I love baking with my grandma. Do you know who that is? It’s Mamère!”
The second came from my oldest daughter. “I really want him (her son) to have his own relationship with y’all like I did with my grandparents. Makes life more meaningful for all involved. He is a little secret sweetie.” She texted me that Leo had left his two stuffed animals, Bunny and Bear, at my house. I imagined how sad he was without them in his bed.
Secret soft stuffy missing beside boy catching silent tears of Loss
Margaret Simon, daily elfchen
I found the stuffies and they are waiting to be returned to their boy.
This week the weather has turned to rain, rain, rain. The fog is hovering. Humidity high. Winter blues making me down. But then there is poetry.
Poetry saves me. I am empowered and energized by having written something. Every day, no matter the weather, I can write a poem.
Elfchen has been my go-to form. I’m writing a few everyday. It’s such a nice compact form that can contain all of my emotions and balance my mood. Here’s one from my notebook.
January 25, 2024 Truth comes in times of silence contemplating the thrumming rain Presence.
Margaret Simon, 1/25/24 draft
I’ve signed up for The Stafford Challenge which is basically a commitment to write daily as William Stafford did. Here’s a poem about wanting to sleep in. It makes me smile.
You Do Not Have to be Good* (*Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”)
You do not have to wake at 4 AM to feed the cats mewing at the back door. Cats are survivors.
Turn over, go back to sleep– the most delicious sleep comes in the wee hours of the morning in the whisper of the heater under the warm blanket his breathing, slow and steady.
Stretch your cramping foot. Discuss with yourself how the day will go if you just sleep a little more.
Dream, perhaps, in this liminal space of sacred meditation. Lie with yourself; Tell her to calm down. The cats can wait.
Margaret Simon, draft
How is your January going? Doesn’t it feel like such a long month? I hope you are writing yourself through it. And staying warm.
My three daughters made a last minute plan to meet at the Children’s Museum. They sent pictures, and I fell in love with this one with the paper butterflies (I first thought they were cranes) and Thomas looking up. He’s 4 years old, the age of wonder. Find a small poem or story in this photo and write it into the comments. Be sure to leave encouraging responses to other writers.
Today on Ethical ELA Leilya teaches us about the Naani form originating from India, an expression of one and all in 4 lines of 20-25 syllables.
Paper butterflies flutter through a wind of imagination– a child’s vision of wonder.
In the new year, I’ve returned to a daily notebook practice with my students. Little did I know the Stafford Challenge would appear and reaffirm my commitment. I adopted this practice years ago after an NCTE panel I coordinated which included Naomi Shihab Nye. We talked about William Stafford’s daily writing, and I adapted the steps to fit with my young students. For whatever reason (maybe Covid) I haven’t been leading my students to write daily in their notebooks. Now I’m reminded of the importance of a daily writing practice. These first few days of the Stafford Challenge, I have opened up more and more on the blank page and worried less about perfection.
Notebook page on Thursday, our first day of school all week.
Our notebook steps:
Date
Quote
What’s Up
Poem-ish
Pretend Play Elfchen
Pretend no script Play echoes life. Their light, my delight –Shine!
I have driven past this church for 16 years. It resides on the same country road as one of my schools. On the left is a small cemetery. Sometime this year I noticed a carpenter I know (I’ve nicknamed him Saint because he is selfless and kind.) doing work on this church. I assume it is an active congregation, but for me, it is the safe haven for our school’s safety plan in case we have to evacuate. We would meet a bus here that would take us to a high school down the road. Does this little building know its job? I’ve been wanting to take this photo for a long time and finally stopped last week. Notice the crooked stop sign, the high cirrus clouds, the simple steeple. Where does your mind go? Please write a small poem today and share it in the comments. Kindly respond to other writers.
I found out about the Stafford Challenge yesterday on Barb Elder’s blog post. I signed up. There is a Zoom gathering tonight with Kim Stafford. I had the pleasure of writing with Kim years ago at a writing marathon. His father William Stafford inspires writers everywhere to practice a daily poem. Whether you join or not, I think this is a good commitment to daily writing.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Visiting my mother is tough these days. She’s good, in the general sense of the word, healthy and happy. This weekend my sister and I drove to be with her, to be with my brother. Leaving on Sunday was hard. We stopped by the front desk at the memory care facility and chatted with the receptionist on duty, Tina.
“This is the hardest part, leaving,” I said.
Tina said, “At least you can see her face. I can’t see my mother anymore. She died a year ago in December.”
“December is a hard month to lose someone,” my sister said.
I noticed that Tina was wearing beaded bracelets. I asked her about them.
“This one says Peace,” she told me.
“Peace is the word I’ve chosen to guide my year, but I haven’t gotten a bracelet yet.”
Tina pulled the bracelet off her wrist and handed it to me. “No, I couldn’t,” was my first reaction and then I realized this was a gift of the heart. To honor her gift, I had to take it. Tears welled up. I gave her a hug and left knowing my mother is in the exact right place with people who care, who love her as she is–with Peace on my wrist and in my heart.
Have you ever had a form attach itself to you and beg you for a daily poem? I’ve hoped for a daily haiku to come to me for years now. I’ve tried it on, and some days it fits just fine, but I’ve recently felt a tug toward elfchen which is a similar form to a cinquain. Five lines. However, in an elfchen (elevenie, in English) there are more specific directions that stretch the form to a higher problem-solving level, a level of Flow for me, not too hard, not too easy.
On Tuesday, I wrote about beginning this new year with a practice of notebooking with my students. I shared an elfchen there.
Do you read The Marginalian? I highly recommend it as a weekly practice. Maria Popova sends a newsletter each Sunday, and it never fails to inspire me. This is a found elfchen from Jan. 7, 2024.
Attention high degree be as prayer gravity in acts of Love
Margaret Simon, found in The Marginalian
“Perhaps this spiritual dimension of love stems from a simple equivalence: At its core, love is the quality of attention we confer upon another; and as Simone Weil observed in her timeless meditation on the nature of grace, “attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” All of love’s gravity and all of its grace are found in our acts of attention.” Love and the Sacred–The Marginalian.
Have you started a new poetry practice? What commitment to writing have you made?
Back to school after winter break I noticed my student’s backpack and his surfeit supply of pencils and clean, pointy eraser heads. He was prepared! I’m not sure this arrangement with his initials on each pencil and eraser was done by him, his mother, or his grandmother, but it made me chuckle and think back to the days of raising my children. They were lucky to find clean clothes to wear.
I admire anyone who can be this organized. I struggle with being organized. It’s a goal for every year, and every year I fail. What does this photo recall for you? Please leave a small poem in the comments and encourage other writers with your responses.
Pencils stand ready for another year of thinking, writing, erasing Surfeit*
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
We officially went back to school on Monday after a full two-week break, but because of an unpredictable weather system, we dismissed early, so I did not see all of my students. In a way I wasn’t ready for a full day. The early release helped me get a grip on what I need to get done this week. It was as though the train I was on came to a full stop in the middle of the journey. Pause. Think. Plan.
I made the decision to lean back on a reliable and time proven way to start our class: 100 Days of Notebooking. I recall a few years ago after attending NCTE, I received the gift of this idea from Michelle Haseltine. I still follow her on Instagram, and she is still notebooking. With my first group of kids on Monday, I introduced the idea.
I leaned back on William Stafford’s writing habit with these 4 steps:
Date
Quote of the Day
What’s up?
Poem-ish
That’s it, a simple format that seems to work every time. I set the timer for 10 minutes and we write…together. Creative freedom is my only goal. I hope getting back to this practice gives me, as well as my students, time to express themselves, a time for pause and peace (my OLW).
For my poem-ish, I wrote an elfchen. These are so fun to write. See the process here.
“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” Paulo Coelho
Yes makes sound like the ocean drawing me to love Myself.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She teaches gifted elementary students, writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 