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Poetry Friday is hosted today by Linda Baie at Teacher Dance.
Inspiration for writing a poem can come from anywhere. I have learned to pay attention to the signs and thank the universe when words become poems. This week I read Eleanor Wilner’s poem “Of a Sun She can Remember”. This poem is a renga poem in which she took the last line of another poem to become her title.
I used the last line of Wilner’s poem, along with other ideas, lines, words from my daily reading to create a poem.
The Golden Net of Meaning in the Light after Eleanor Wilner
When a missile misses its mark, children die. When channels are closed, prices rise. Choose your trouble. Turn your blinded eyes toward the sun. Pace the meadow filled with butterweed. Give your heart-swift to the clouds hovering. We are all connected as the golden cross-hatched web tethered between rose bushes. What I need to say— After the rain, birds sing a glorious chorus.
Margaret Simon, drafted
Pádraig Ó Tuama
If you would like to participate in the Kidlit Progressive Poem in April, please go to this link to sign up.
April is National Poetry Month. Each year the #kidlit poetry community writes a progressive poem. The idea originated from Irene Latham. Each day the poem travels to a different blog, and the poet adds a new line to the poem. Past poems can be seen here.
If you’d like to participate in this year’s progressive poem, please comment on this post with your date choice and blog URL link. Come back to this post to copy and paste the schedule into your blog post. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
April 1 April 2 April 3 April 4 April 5 April 6 April 7 April 8 April 9 April 10 April 11 April 12 April 13 April 14 April 15 April 16 April 17 April 18 April 19 April 20 April 21 April 22 April 23 April 24 April 25 April 26 April 27 April 28 April 29 April 30
I did not do my own assignment. I kept putting it off with excuse after excuse. This month I posed what I thought would be a simple, easy challenge for my Inklings writing group, “Write a poem using the word becoming.”
I searched my notebook, my Google Docs, and no miracle there. I simply had not written to my own prompt. Last night I decided to take inspiration from fellow Inkling Linda Mitchell and write a haiku sonnet. (She had shared hers at our meeting last weekend.) Form does not always become a poem.
Is it cheating to use a repeating line? After playing with the title “Becoming Spring”, I wrote the title “Becoming Beautiful”. Almost daily, my youngest daughter sends new photos of my newest grandson. Yesterday she sent this one with the text, “Someone had a cute spurt today.” We all marvel at how this baby just gets more and more adorable.
“Cute spurt”
Nevertheless, here is my down-to-the-wire draft of a haiku sonnet for this cutie.
Becoming Beautiful
You are born with it in the deep blue of the sea you glisten like gems
You are born with it eventually you smile at your mother’s stare
You are born with it shine like the full blood moon a friend to the sun
You are born with it because that is who you are someone’s true love
No need to apologize Be beautiful as you are
Margaret Simon, for Sam, draft
Check out the brilliant ways Inklings responded to this prompt:
Poetry Friday is here today! Please scroll to inLinkz to post your link.
In addition to Poetry Friday, one of my favorite places to hang out is Ethical ELA during the monthly Open Write. This month we were hosted by Stacey Joy and Seana Hurd Wright.
I am sharing three poems I wrote in response to their prompts.
I Believe in Morning
reflections bayou glows heron hunts
chickadee dee-dee-dees feeder swings
doodle curls on my lap All is well
“Let us open and open without knowing how” Billy Merrell from “Moth” ( found in Dictionary for a Better World)
Like the butterfly in spring, Let your heart know the us of the universe: We open the screen door and swallowtail flies to the open skies without anyone holding on or even knowing where it was going, just how.
This week giant swallowtail butterflies hatched from their over winter chrysalises.
Susan Thomsen posted a prompt from David Lehman to use the last line of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself as a first line to a new poem. I have my grandchildren spending the night, and we read a silly scary story called The Dark Night. I went back to a New Year’s prompt from Pádraig Ó Tuama for a pantoum about the night.
The Dark Night I stop somewhere waiting for you. Footsteps clonking on wooden stairs— Womblike whoosh of your sound machine, Your shadow shape shifts in the low light.
Footsteps tender on wooden stairs. Owl “who-cooks-for-you” wakes; its shadow shape shifts in this low light. Time stands still.
Owl hoots who-cooks-for-you as I breathe your scent before you’re here. Time stands still. Will my love be good enough?
I breathe your sleeping scent. Womblike whooshes from your sound machine. Will my loving arms be enough? I stop somewhere waiting for you.
I received an advance copy of a new poetry book from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Have you ever read a book that just feels good in your hands?
Poems for Every Season: A Year of Haiku, Sonnets, and More by Bette Westera offers a number of different poetry forms translated by David Colmer. Each page is a comforting woodcut design by Henriette Boerendans.
Poems For Every Season, publishing date Feb. 17, 2026Woodcut art by Henriette Boerendans
Each poem is a delight of language, form, imagery, and the miracles of nature.
The final poem is a sonnet for February. Just when you think it’s warm enough to go outside and sow some seeds, winter makes another appearance.
Prompted by Susan Brisson in Laura Shovan’s February Challenge to write a Cento poem, I turned each page of this book to find a poem.
Roaming the Seasons
Pale petals drift down Green buds will soon be showing on trees. Velvety bees Carving a nest Buzz by Among the yellow buttercups Clear I need sun Under a blanket of leaves Gathering growing sheltering All curled up in my cozy bed. We like it here and we stay.
Cento by Margaret Simon from Poems For Every Season by Bette Westera, translated by David Colmer.
Today is the first Friday of the month which is time for our Inklings challenge. This month Molly, our PF host today, asked us to follow a prompt to replace word for word of a Wendell Barry small poem. “Like Snow”
In South Louisiana, we don’t get much snow, but winter is a time for fog. One morning I watched the fog floating above the bayou and wrote my poem response.
Like Fog
What if I became a mist
Like the fog, softly, softly
Lifting the day.
Fog on Bayou Teche
To read how other Inklings met this challenge, click below:
This month the Poetry Sisters challenge was to write a tricube. The tricube form is 3 syllables, 3 lines, 3 stanzas.
Molly Hogan sent me the list of prompts from the MoSt Poetry Center. The prompt I used was this:
“Write a poem of presence, in terms of being in a particular place and time, or of having a dynamic demeanor (such as in “stage presence”) or a feeling of an unseen spirit. Here’s an example by Arthur Sze, our new U. S. Poet Laureate:
Every year as I begin to set intentions, I get the universal message of presence. I feel presence is essential to peace of mind, but it is difficult to find.
I have a new kayak. Taking the kayak out took some initiative and help from my husband hero. Jeff had the grandkids in the canoe. When I wanted to try to get the kayak out of the water by myself, my grandson Leo said, “Prove it.” That was all the challenge I needed to pull the 60 pound vessel onto the dock. I did it.
First kayak adventure in “Chrysalis.”
Here after Arthur Sze
Be here now Here frog croaks Here wren calls
Be here now Here stalk grows Here tea steams
Be here now Here oar strokes Here strength comes
Margaret Simon
I want to thank Tabatha Yeatts who offered on Poetry Friday last week to do an art piece for our 2026 words. I took her up on the offer. I’m touched and amazed at how this speaks to my intention for the year as well as the tricube I wrote.
Last week I had the privilege of leading a writing workshop for a class of ninth grade girls at the Academy of Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. The school is located near a pasture of horses and grove of live oaks trees. The drive itself felt sacred even though I was nervous. I have years of experience teaching elementary kids, high school is a horse of a different color. But once I got started and looked into the sweet, kind, and welcoming faces of these girls and their teacher, I felt relaxed and calm.
I felt like found poetry would be an accessible form to share because it is less intimidating than a blank page. What was so exciting for me was each girl wrote a unique poem with a different voice even though the text was the same.
It was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, so I pulled a speech that was not as well known as the “I Have a Dream” speech. We read “How Long? Not Long” from the end of the Selma march.
Today I am sharing four of the students’ poems that they gave me permission to publish.
We Will See by Alana
We will see We the free-loving people will one day see the victory rested over their dead bodies and where is our dignity? where is our humanity? when will we see? how long? not long we will one day see that will be the day of man as man and we will all be free We will see
Electrify our hearts for the understanding of friendship by Zelie
When the powerful understanding of friendship itself comes into our lives, and the universe wants to see us wounded, When society fears to live in the truth of the dim unknown, and when we may no longer have that passionate star that shines before us, Let us become electrified by the majestic face of friendship and the confrontation of good and evil. Face the danger. Look it in the eye and keep marching on because, though we are tired, our souls and hearts are rested.
We Have Walked by Anna
We have walked through desolate valleys across trying hills.
We have walked on meandering highways and on rocky byways.
We have walked.
“Well, aren’t you tired?”
We have walked and our feet are tired.
We have walked but our souls are rested.
We have walked.
Man as Man by Kaylyn
My dear friends, who have assembled here from all over the world,
our bodies are tired
but as I stand before you we can say, our feet are tired, but our souls are rested.
They told us we wouldn’t get here.
Out of this struggle, a new idea, more powerful than guns was born.
It witnessed the whole community of Negroes facing terror and heroic courage but, without the vote, it was dignity without strength.
Every race good and evil generated the massive power to turn the whole nation to a new course.
We must come to see not of the white man, not of the black man,
Even though I’m not teaching daily, I still subscribe to Teach This Poem. This week I used the lesson to prompt my own writing. The model poem was Ok, Let’s Go by Maureen McLane and included a painting by Claude Monet, “Impression, Sunrise.” I usually write as the sun is rising, so the artwork echoed for me the sun rising over the bayou. I also used two of the words from my Wordle guess.
Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet
Dawn School
After Maureen McLane
Dawn school begins without me as it settles sun rays upon still water.
Let’s be here where the teachers are cypress knees and squawking herons.
Sunrise impression is a silhouette hovering over tainted tin of a resting Joe boat
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 