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Archive for the ‘Poetry Friday’ Category

Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem Sign Up

Posted in Poetry Friday on March 13, 2020| 35 Comments »

April is coming faster than I realized, and I had forgotten that I promised Irene Latham that I would take over organizing the 2020 Progressive Poem. Irene started the tradition of a progressive poem in 2012. Click here to see past poems.

There are few rules. The poem will be passing from blog to blog with each poet-blogger adding a line. The poem is for children. Other than that, anything goes. Usually the poem takes on a life of its own, so don’t be intimidated to sign up. Just do it and wait for your turn. Then let the creative muse do what she must.

Copy and paste the poem up to your date and add your line. Simple. Some poets like to write about the process which is always interesting for the rest of us to read, but it isn’t necessary.

When you sign up, state which date you would like and leave a link to your blog. I will update the list as comments come in.

Please email me with any questions. (margaretsmn at gmail)

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

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Poetry Friday: Questions

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on March 6, 2020| 17 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is Rebecca at Sloth Reads

It’s another month, so that means a new challenge for the Sunday Night Poetry Swaggers. This month I posed the challenge of writing a question poem.

I had some pretty feeble starts at this one, but one day last week I was inspired by the very thing happening in our wood duck house. Last year we put up a wood duck house around this time of year, but the first clutch never hatched. We are watching through a Ring doorbell camera attached to the roof of the nest box.

We have another hen. She’s been sitting since February 24th, so projected hatch date is somewhere between March 16th and 18th. I have a good feeling about this hen. Even though we’ve had some cool nights, she sits all night and leaves once in the morning and once in the evening to feed. When she leaves, she completely covers the clutch with down, so we really have no idea how many eggs she is sitting on. We learned our lesson last year, so we will Not be going out there to check.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, my question poem.

Will She Come Again?

It’s February and we wonder
will she come again,
this wood duck mother hen?

Will she find the house we’ve built?
a box, like a cypress quilt,
waiting to be a home.

In the morning we look and see.
Papa wood duck, where is she?
Where’s your mate? Is she about?

Connected to our house WiFi,
we keep a daily eye,
a camera on the nestbox roof.

She’s in, then out, then in again,
this mother wood duck hen.
Will she lay a clutch?

How many eggs? It’s hard to tell.
She covers them all so well.
Plucks her down, soft and warm.

How does she know how?
Waiting, watching, wondering now
for twenty-eight more days.

Will wood duck chicks hatch from this downy haze? 

Margaret Simon, (c) 2020
Wood duck from Public Domain

Read more question poems from my writing pals:

Heidi Mordhorst
Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Molly Hogan

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Poetry Friday: Gratitude

Posted in Gratitude, Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on February 28, 2020| 10 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Karen Edmisten.

Linda Baie shared a video on Facebook that I immediately took up as a writing prompt. It’s a beautiful short film by Louie Schwartzberg. (See link below to watch the video)

I took a quote from the young girl at the beginning and made a golden shovel. “The path could lead to a beach or something.”

Cultivate a response to the
day; open your eyes and a path
could be there, weather could
change, and lead
to water, to
a new way to see, a
gift as joyful as a beach,
waves blessing you or
moving you to touch something.

Margaret Simon, draft response
Photo by Margaret Simon, Santa Rosa Beach Florida

Kathy Mazurowski is the winner of the book giveaway for After Dark: Poems About Nocturnal Animals by David L. Harrison, illustrated by Stephanie Laberis. Click the link to read how I used the book with my students and wrote nonfiction poems.

Take a minute to write a quick 15 word poem to this week’s This Photo Wants to be a Poem. This week is a beautiful photo by Molly Hogan.

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Poetry Friday: Song of the Sacred

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged on February 21, 2020| 8 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Cheriee at Library Matters.

An Invitation: With Laura Purdie Salas’s blessing, I’ve started a weekly writing prompt for Thursdays in the spirit of 15 words or less. Pop over to read the poems this week about a pretty pink thistle: This Photo Wants to be a Poem.

This week my students and I read Joyce Sidman’s poem in the December issue of Scope magazine: Song of Bravery. There were a few things to notice in her poem, allusion and irony. When one normally thinks of a song, it’s something positive and praising. Joyce Sidman’s poem stated the opposite.


This one’s not a sure thing.
I’m not bound to win.
I don’t think I’ll ace it this time.
I won’t break a leg,
make my own luck,
or reach the stars.

Joyce Sidman, Song of Bravery from What the Heart Knows
read the whole poem here.

After Joyce, I wrote Song of the Sacred.

I am not a barefoot Buddha.
I cannot think and become.
I’m not singing rhyming psalms
in the present moment.

When I fall on my knees, they hurt.
I have no burnt offerings
or holy incense to light.

Maybe I pray with open hands
or maybe someone prays for me.
I’ll never know.

But here I am
stretched in savasana
humming an Om
with my eyes closed tight

Breathing to clear my mind
from the shadows of a cloudy day
to see the holy sun.

Margaret Simon, draft
Photo by David Bartus from Pexels

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Poetry Friday dedicated to Hans the Frog

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , on February 14, 2020| 13 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Linda at Teacher Dance.

Because it’s Valentine’s Day, I won’t write about the week I’ve had or lost love or about the cold I’ve been fighting. Instead I’ll share a ditty I wrote this week for Laura Shovan’s challenge. Susan Brisson prompted us with frog pictures and a delightful video of her husband and son catching frogs from their pond to take them into the woods, so the little creatures would survive the winter.

Photo by Susan Brisson.

When my youngest daughter was two (she’s now 29), we had a small flower bed that always seemed to be its own pond. She could hear a frog croaking in the flower bed and decided to name it Hans. To this day, we don’t know why, but Hans the frog has become our family’s totem. One Christmas my husband made a huge plywood frog wearing a Santa hat, and we put it up every Christmas.

When watching Susan’s son hopping around gathering frogs into a bucket jogged this memory for me.

Dedicated to my daughter Martha

And here’s a lagniappe poem. Lagniappe is a common term used in Louisiana to mean a little something extra.

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Poetry Friday: Terza Rima

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , on February 7, 2020| 22 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Laura at Writing the World for Kids.

Take a walk with me on this chilly day. The temperature dropped during the day yesterday from a rainy 55 degrees to a frigid 35 degrees with winds close to 20 mph. Bundle up in your winter coat and gloves. Did you bring your wool socks? As we walk past the bayou and along the road, we come to an open field. Watch your step because the ground is uneven here, and you may step in a puddle.

There near the neighboring house is a tree that looks like it may have been struck by lightning. It’s leaning slightly, but oh! It’s bright with pink blossoms. Flowers in winter? I think Japanese magnolia likes to be the first to show off her new spring dress.

My poetry swaggers group had a difficult challenge this month, given by Catherine Flynn. Terza Rima, she suggested, a form none of us had ever tried. But it’s from Dante, she delighted, not knowing yet that we are no Dantes.

Nevertheless, I gave it a shot. The first results lacked greatly. After a few rounds with my writing buddies, they helped me patch it up to present today. A terza rima is not going into my book of forms. This was a tough code to crack. Here’s a link to some confusing helpful guidelines.

A Japanese magnolia takes a chance
on blooming ‘fore the risk of frost is gone
with warming trends alive inside its branch.

Perhaps a passing storm had left it torn
in this winter field alone and gray,
when leaves of life from limbs are yet unborn.

Bold flowers burst bright pink and lift away
a fog; flamboyant beauty flirts for view
when wind blows chill across my path today. 

A Japanese magnolia takes a chance.

Margaret Simon, draft #5

Visit the Poetry Swaggers Sites for more (and better, if you ask me) Terza Rima poems.

Catherine Flynn
Molly Hogan
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst

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Poetry Friday: National Curmudgeon’s Day

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , , on January 31, 2020| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Jone.

Did you know that Wednesday, Jan. 29th was National Curmudgeons Day in honor of W.C. Fields’ birthday? I didn’t either until I got an email from Jen Laffin’s blog Teach Write. Jen listed some great writing prompts to use with your students.

My students loved this. I loved giving them a word they didn’t already know, which is a challenge when teaching gifted kids. In their notebooks, they wrote poems and character sketches as well as drew pictures of Grumpy Cat, Oscar the Grouch, and the two old men from the Muppets.

I reminded them of the poem form, definito, which was created by my friend and fellow poetry swagger, Heidi Mordhorst. A definito is a poem of 8-12 lines that defines a word and ends with the defined word.

I worked on this poem playing with a rhyme scheme. Writing this poem cheered me up, out of curmudgeonliness.

National Curmudgeons Day Definito

When your day starts out in slush and mud,
When nothing seems quite right,
When your cat scratches drawing blood,
When you’ve already lost the fight,
When all you want to do is rest
or hide, just slam the door,
You can’t suppress your grumpiness;
Your mom says you’re a boar.
Your face turns green and grouchy,
shoulders glum and slouchy.
It may be better to stay in
as you are a curmudgeon.

Margaret Simon, 2020
My notebook page for National Curmudgeons Day.

Angry Growler,
loudest shouter.

A faultfinder,
spirit grinder.

Always shut in,
a curmudgeon.

A.J., 6th grade
Breighlynn’s notebook page.

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Poetry Friday: Imagine

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , on January 24, 2020| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Kathryn down under at her website.

When I started #100DaysofNotebooking with my students, I couldn’t imagine that we would be reading and writing poetry every day. But poetry is where my radar goes, and a good poetry prompt for me is also good for my kiddos.

Thanks to Ethical ELA, I had many ways to lead my students into writing this week. The prompts are still up on the website, and I highly recommend them. Writing together day by day helps me and my students to be vulnerable together. From this prompt, we wrote poems about loved ones who have passed away. My students touched me with their honesty. They had to bear with me choking up when I shared this poem about my dear friend Amy:

Amy Who
inspired by Abuelito Who by Sandra Cisneros

Amy who looked like Sandra Bullock
but better, whose smile glowed a mile away,
who wore a crown with grace
when she threw beads to the crowd,
whom you may call a social butterfly,
but her conversations were real; she didn’t stray
from the tough stuff, and laughed aloud
at funny happenstance,
who held my grandbaby the last time I saw her,
tears in her eyes
as she said, “I will never have this.”
Who faced cancer with wisdom,
never giving up
while knowing all the while
her body was,
who left us all missing her,
whose joy lives on,
and her smile.

Margaret Simon, draft 2020
This photo of Amy from the first Berry Queen Ball in 2008 stays on my my refrigerator.

A prompt from Teach this Poem led me to a video of “Imagine” by John Lennon. Sadly, most of my students didn’t even know who he was, much less the song. But this freshness caused them to be open and creative in their writing.

The world
breaking into countries
some people can only imagine
while others can do something.
We would want our world
to be like clouds in the sky
staying together
to make a huge crowd
shouting and singing.
They contain heaven
where everyone lives in peace
not separating their clouds.
We don’t want our world to
turn into nothing

Jaden, 4th grade
Photo from PIxabay

No reason,
to kill or
die for.
Imagine,
I might be called a dreamer,
but there are others
who think the same.
I hope some day…
you’ll join us,
a brotherhood of man…
No need
for greed or
hunger.
Imagine us
all living and loving,

                      -together

Daniel, 5th grade

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Poetry Friday: Crossing

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged on January 17, 2020| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with my friend and critique partner, Catherine Flynn.

In my school email inbox, I get a weekly poetry lesson from Poets.org. called Teach this Poem. I don’t do these every week because the intended audience is middle and high school, and my students are elementary. But this week the author’s bio drew my attention. Jericho Brown is from Shreveport, Louisiana, a native to our state.

In the lesson, students were to identify a picture from the Library of Congress of the March on Washington. Enough of my students know about MLK, Jr. that they understood what they were seeing. Relating the poem to the march was a stretch for them, however.

Nevertheless, we wrote after Jericho Brown.

The water is one thing, and one thing for miles.
The water is one thing, making this bridge
Built over the water another. Walk it
Early, walk it back when the day goes dim, everyone
Rising just to find a way toward rest again.

Read the rest here.

Jericho Brown, Poets.org

My poem became one of address to Jericho Brown.

We have crossed the line,
that imaginary space between
you and me, a wall covered in vines.
Tearing at the weeds, I find a flower–
morning glory. Help us, Jericho, to see
the flower in the weeds, the flame
inside a rainbow, crossing over
barriers to a place
where we can all leap together.

Margaret Simon, draft 2020

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Poetry Friday: Red Rainbow

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged on January 10, 2020| 15 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Sally Murphy.

While the news of the world has most of us down and wondering what will happen next, my fellow poets and I turn to nature. Molly Hogan lets her eye find solace in nature in her poem this week. Linda Mitchell has haiku to share. And Catherine Flynn shares “Making Peace”
by Denise Levertov, “The poets must give us the imagination of peace…”

For more links to poetry peace, click over to Sally Murphy’s site. Sally is an Australian author supporting #authorsforfireys on Twitter, an auction to help fire relief in Australia.

I was recently driving to New Orleans on a stormy day, but the closer I got to Nola, the clouds turned red from the setting sun and a rainbow appeared. Who doesn’t love a good rainbow to inspire promise?

But I was driving, so taking a picture was tricky, and writing a poem impossible. Later I tried dictating my idea into the notes app. Some of the words recorded. Enough for the idea to germinate into this draft.

A car wizzes past
going 85 or 90 miles an hour.
Weaving in and out, the driver
couldn’t have noticed the sun
drawing light into the clouds
like a bonfire on a cold night,

Or the rainbow that appeared
streaking more red than any
rainbow I’ve ever seen.
I slowed to snap a picture,

longing to forget the speeding car,
the violent news of the day,
and drive into the sunset
with the promise of a rainbow. 

Margaret Simon, draft 2020

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