Poetry Friday posts with Laura Purdie Salas at Writing the World for Kids
While summer seems far away as I end my eighth week in school, my poetry swap gifts continue to come. Jone and Iphigene both contacted me by email to say their poetry gifts were late. I was late, too, so I didn’t mind. In fact, I love receiving a surprise in the mail…anytime. Iphigene’s gift included this beautiful painting of the bayou. She lives in the Philippines, so she had to use images from my blog to imagine this scene. She definitely captured the peacefulness.
Bayou Teche by Iphigene Daradar. Acrylic on paper.
This is what Iphigene said in her note to me about composing the poem:
“When I was conceptualizing the poem, I thought I’d write about the Teche, but as I read your recent blog posts, the idea of impossible, possible, and overcoming kept surfacing. In the end, I wrote a poem with those words in mind. The tone of the poem, too, is not my usual. It was influenced by the biopic of Emily Dickinson called A Quiet Passion.”
The Extent of Our Souls
By Iphigene (For Margaret)
There is an extent by which our soul stretches
One that is measured by words
Short phrases echoed through
In the silence of our minds
In the loose utterance of
‘stupid’ and ‘can’t’
Mingled in laughter, our skin
Think as nothing
Our souls call as truth
Like a seed planted
In perfect day, bears root
Bears bloom, each day
And so, our soul, fits itself
In the limits of our bodies
Brittle for the measure—
Impossible.
However,
As those who know words
Who play with the scales of phrases
Our measures change with space
And rightly placed punctuation
I’m possible.
Feel the impossible stretch
And the soul re-tells its truth
Stretching to ‘greatness’
And knowing it can.
Bearing roots that bloom
Perennial in the hearts
Of those who try to stretch
Their souls to possibility
and its truth.
This week I was blessed by a gift from Jone MacCulloch. She takes beautiful photographs. She sent an amazing close-up of a dahlia and her poem printed on a plaque that stands. In addition to the photo-plaque, she sent a copy of her book Solace in Nature which is a collection of her photos and poems.
photo and poem by Jone MacCulloch
Here is a photo and poem from her book, Solace in Nature.
winged fighter pilots
dive bomb daily
over sweet nectar
by Jone MacCulloch
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Reflections on the Teche 