These first days of school have been exhausting. Yet I am happy to be doing what I am meant to do. When I get home, I mindlessly scroll through my Facebook feed. I love posts that relax my brain, beautiful landscapes, quotes, flowers…
This one caught my eye. I haven’t seen these colors yet. Dianne Dempsey-Legnon posted this wistful message, “It’s almost here. Looking forward to the crunch of leaves under my feet, the crackle of a fireplace, and cinnamon in my hot tea.” Ah, yes! With all the back to school prep, I forgot that the season is changing. Fall will come.
Photo taken on Pig Trail outside of Hot Springs, Arkansas by Dianne Dempsey-Legnon, 2019
In the comments, post a small poem inspired by the photo. Please comment on other writers with encouraging words.
Fall in the air makes me sneeze. Mumbled through a cloth mask, you say, Bless you and mean it.
Last night I participated in a poetry reading Words for You with the Festival of Words. It was a fundraiser event for the festival. We usually find sponsors and read in a day long poetry event in downtown Lafayette, but this year fundraising, as everything, looks different. Louisiana writers volunteered to be commissioned to write a poem. Each poet wrote a special, unique poem for the person who selected them. I was chosen by my mother-in-law, Anne Simon.
I was touched by a poem by Li-Young Lee “From Blossoms” and used it to form a poem for “Minga” (her grandma name my oldest child gave her). Just a few words about this amazing woman. She is a retired district judge. She’s the mother of three, grandmother to six, and great grandmother to 2 with another on the way. She is fond of birds and flowers, tennis and basketball, and foreign travel. She’s taken me along on a trip to Greece when she turned 80 and Africa for her 85th birthday.
I hope that my poem honors who she is in some small way. Writing for someone you know well is not as easy at it may seem.
Desert Rose for Anne Simon after Li-Young Lee “From Blossoms”
From a broad-base bonsai trunk, trumpet-like blossoms pop festival-red, that desert rose Julie bought at Lowe’s when Love was a potted plant.
From desert soil “complex, yet refined” a pearl in an ocean of sand, your hand taps to test its dampness. You are judicial
even in your watering. The flowers stand up and notice your kindness. O, to take what we love inside the porch, a safari, to see not only the rose, but the whole Serengeti.
There are days we talk as if death will not separate us; Your voice, my heartbeat from love to love to love, from rose to soil to deepest esteem, the deepest kind of esteem.
I’ve been raising monarchs. See this post. I am also planning for hybrid teaching, some in person, some virtual. Finding my direction through these tasks has challenged me in new ways.
Male monarch by Judy Rizzo
The word alchemy came across my radar. I found this definition: “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” The process of metamorphosis is alchemy and in many ways, so is the way we have to teach this year. I decided to mine alchemist for words using Wordmaker. Following a poetic process created by April Halprin Wayland, I wrote a poem that probably doesn’t make sense to anybody but me. Let’s just say, finding my direction through this unique school year has taken some proactive effort. (The words from Wordmaker are in bold.)
Finding Direction
Connect line by line, etch a trail through calm worry, eyes that smile despite each new hurdle to scale. Raise the latch and release butterfly-mail to the gods of ethics— Teach.
This weekend I was driving home from a trip to New Orleans for my grandson’s first birthday. On the drive I saw the sun shining from behind a cloud overlooking the tall sugarcane fields. Harvesting will start soon. I love the fall.
Sky speaks with a strong voice, Sprinkle your light wherever you are.
Margaret Simon, draft
I invite you to write a small poem in the comments. Leave an encouraging comment for other writers. Experiment with words. Find a line; follow its lead.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Hurricane Laura threatened our area two weeks ago. We were lucky that we didn’t get a direct hit, but I was worried about the eggs on my milkweed plants. I had observed a female flitting around and laying eggs, so I knew there were a few.
Photo by Lory Landry
Lesson #1: Where there is one, there are many: The monarch egg is tiny and difficult to see, so when you see one, there may be more. I cut all my milkweed and put it into small bud vases inside a butterfly enclosure. Before I knew it, one became many. After I counted 30, I stopped counting. Every day there were more.
Lesson #2: They don’t all make it. When we were raising wood ducks, a wise Cajun fiddle player, 20 year old Adelaide, told us, “Don’t get attached. They don’t all hatch.” The same is true of monarch caterpillars. I stopped counting how many I’ve lost. They’ve died at different stages, some as tiny newbies, and others within the chrysalis. I have learned to accept loss as part of the process. Only 2% make it through the whole life cycle. That’s a tough statistic.
Clip from a video shows two caterpillars just days apart each other in growth.
Lesson #3: Farmers rise early. School has started and to be able to get to the chores of cleaning and feeding my “cats”, I have to get up early. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is no exaggeration. They eat and poop a lot! They’ve gone through all my garden milkweed, the trimmings from a friend’s yard, 4 plants I picked up at a nursery, 4 plants that my friend bought, a bag of frozen butternut squash, and half of a fresh butternut squash. I still have some feeding. I am not kidding!
Lesson #4: Hang out with the experts. I have joined a Facebook group called The Beautiful Monarch. You can post images there for celebration, but there are also experienced farmers to offer advice and commiseration. The raising of monarchs is “a whole world.”
Clip from a video of a caterpillar in J-formation getting ready to pupate.
Lesson #5: Give the gift of resurrection: I have had to find and buy more butterfly enclosures. But in so doing, I can spread the joy to others. Judy didn’t understand why her milkweed was bare. At closer inspection, we discovered 4 hungry caterpillars. They came home with me in a small terrarium that she had handy. Once the chrysalises were formed, I gave it back to her to enjoy the emerging stage. I also gave an enclosure with 3 chrysalises to a colleague in need of encouragement.
I have mixed feelings about this whole experience. It’s been a hard job to do well. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. But isn’t that the way we feel about any new experience, inept yet open to learning? Kind of like educating children in a pandemic.
The Sunday Night Swaggers are back to monthly challenges. This month Catherine Flynn has challenged us to write an In One Word poem created by April Halprin Wayland. See her introductory post here.
I know I am not alone in having a rough beginning to this school year. Foremost on my mind is what is best for kids. Unfortunately, there are many meetings and required gobbledygook to get to the fun part of teaching. Every year, my goal is to inspire explorers, writers, and scholars. Following April’s prompt, I went to Wordmaker to gather words that can be made with the letters in inspiration. Each line ends with a word I chose. Thinking about this exercise was just what I needed to block out the messiness.
Virtual Teacher
I didn’t warm-up for this sprint. Breathless; my hand anoints each name, a nonart list that rips into a class of sorts, a prison on screen, trap of pixels, brain strain. Who’s bringing the aspirin?
In the spirit of language, I rant. Yet, I don’t rant about you. You are the rain to my pain, showing me we can soar.
The weeks are beginning to speed up now that I am back at school. I have to rise early to have time for a walk, and today I was rewarded by the full moon setting.
Full Moon Setting September 2
Almost every morning since the pandemic started I vox with my friend Julieanne Harmatz. We met at NCTE years ago and have been friends ever since. Julianne lives in L.A., not LA (Louisiana). We often cross time zones with our messages. This morning I sent this picture to her, and she responded with the first line of this poem.
I have the same moon reflecting off the ocean in between the palm trees connecting me to you.
Margaret Simon, draft
I invite you to write a small poem in the comments. Leave an encouraging comment for other writers. Experiment with words. Find a line; follow its lead.
This week I feature another amazing photo by Molly Hogan. I know we’ve written about webs before, but this one caught my eye for its uniqueness. Find a detail to focus and meditate on, the punctum (See the quote below). Write a poem about this detail. Could our individual poems be put together to create the complete photograph?
In Roland Barthes’s 1981 book Camera Lucida, he introduces the concept of a photograph’s punctum, which can be defined as the sensory, intensely subjective effect of a photograph on the viewer, or as he puts it: “that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).” Barthes contrasts the punctum with the studium, which is the more general approach to a photograph informed by historical and cultural experiences. Choose a personal photograph and meditate on the specific conditions, feelings, and circumstances behind it. What do you feel and know from looking at it? Then, identify the precise detail in the photograph you are drawn to—what is it exactly? Using your senses, write a poem that centers and delves into the punctum, the precise detail. What does a detail reveal about the whole?
I chose to focus on the fulcrum that binds the web to the marsh grass.
Silk arrow, a fulcrum balance for delicate lace.
Margaret Simon, draft
Due to the aftermath (no power or internet) of Hurricane Laura, I am posting this for Poetry Friday. We fared well through the storm and have recovered for the most part. Please keep our friends in Lake Charles, LA in your prayers.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I recently read Anna Quindlen’s Nanaville. I could have written it. Replace her son with my daughter and give Arthur the name Leo, and we are the same! Her grandson Arthur is learning Mandarin and English while Leo is learning Spanish (from his babysitter) and English. Quindlen’s book has inspired me to capture “Small Moments” about my grandchildren.
Leo calls milk “che-che” which is Leo for Spanish leche. He calls water for drinking agua while wawer means bath or swimming pool. Sometimes we assume a word is one he learned in Spanish because we don’t know what he is saying.
Leo is becoming himself and asserting his own language. He has decided to call me “Gon.” This, I guess comes from “grandma”, but it’s not very cute. He says it as a command like “no” or “mine.” We have been trying to get him to call me Ma mère because his grandfather wants to be Grandpère. Grandpère has become the sweetest soft sound of “Pee-père.” Leo has made the connection now, so following his command “Gon!” comes sweet eyes and “Ma mère.”
In addition to language, I am fascinated by how Leo plays. On Saturday a friend stopped by and brought me two quilts she had made for the boys. Leo chose the one with fish and gators on it. We laid it out on the kitchen floor, and I opened a drawer full of paper products: plates, napkins, and cupcake holders. He went back and forth from the quilt to the drawer to create a picnic. Here is a picture of him with a paper plate of goldfish, a favorite snack. “Shish.”
The thing about language is that it it the ultimate transactional process. If you watch children acquire language, you can see them not only speaking but arranging the known world. We ask them questions we know they know the answers to–What color is the ball? Where do frogs live?–so that they can practice the arrangement. It’s also pretty thrilling to be part of the process, and for a grandparent it’s tantamount to learning a new dialect.
Anna Quindlen, Nanaville
We ask Leo questions all day long. And he labels things. He also makes connections. He will point to the bayou and say “wawer” and follow it with “boat!” Then he waves because that is what we do. Watch for boats and wave to them. He sees a man wearing khaki pants and a hat cutting the grass and says “Pee-père.”
One of my favorite connections he’s made is the portal we use to call my parents. He says, “Pop!” He’s getting to know my parents in a different way using technology, but they are a part of his life and his vocabulary.
At 11 months, Thomas, Leo’s cousin (my second daughter’s son) is experimenting with his body, crawling at lightning speed and climbing stairs equally as fast. I could have sworn last week when I kept Thomas overnight, he echoed, “Night night.” I recall that his mother spoke early.
As a grandmother, I have the luxury of time with and time without my grandsons. I can pay attention to these milestones. Make note of them. Marvel at them. I am an observer. On the sidelines to the great miracle that is language and love.
Earlier this week, I witnessed a female monarch laying eggs in my milkweed. She was an unexpected, yet welcomed visitor. I watched while she flitted from leaf to leaf. I have gathered 10 of the leaves into a net habitat to wait and watch.
My writing partner Catherine Flynn wrote an etheree today on her site, Reading to the Core. Here is the definition of the form:
An etheree is a poem of ten lines in which each line contains one more syllable than the last. Beginning with one syllable and ending with ten, this unrhymed form is named for its creator, 20th century American poet Etheree Taylor Armstrong.
Pearl on milkweed, seed for monarch, still and quiet August: Promised ingredient to Mother Earth’s recipe for autumn migration glory. Like watching the birth of a grandchild, I’m mere observer of this miracle.
Margaret Simon, 2020
For my birthday last week, Catherine sent me this sweet golden shovel. I’ve met many kind people in the Poetry Friday community, and Catherine is one of the best. We’ve been in a writing group for five years. We meet by Zoom (even before the pandemic) every other week. I am blessed to have such a kind and loving writing partner. Thanks, Catherine. The feeling is mutual.
“…all that might be gained from opening one’s heart wider. Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch
How fortunate am I that of all the people in the world that I might have met, I met you, a kindred spirit, destined to be friends. So much to give, so much to be gained by writing together, learning from you, opening my eyes to new vistas, so different from ones I know, reaching my heart, helping it grow wider.
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 