Poetry Friday round-up is with Donna at Mainely Write
This week there was a big moon event: the second full moon in January called the blue moon as well as a lunar eclipse that caused the moon to appear reddish and the fact that the moon was closer to the Earth than usual making it a super moon, thus blue blood super moon.
What better reason do we need for writing poems?
Prompted by NASA images and Laura Purdie Salas’s book If You Were the Moon, my students and I wrote moon metaphor poems.
Lynzee watched and wrote as slides of moon photos rolled across the screen.
Super Blue Blood Moon
Two birds, side by side,
front row seat
for what happened
in the early hours of the morning.
Birds flying in front of the moon
like sparkles on a disco ball,
they see, too, what happened.
Plane flying, too,
over the skies of Britain
like the moon’s huge moving tattoo.
Lynzee, 3rd grade
Chloe is new to writing poetry. She’s a second grader. She seems to be grasping the idea of metaphor in her poem. She was so proud of her poem, she typed it in all caps.
THE MOON IS BRIGHT LIKE A STAR
IT IS NOT A STAR BUT IT IS FAR
THE MOON IS A BABY FOR EARTH
Chloe, 2nd grade
Madison is becoming quite a poet. Her poem is one I used in other classes to model the use of metaphor.
Peppermint Moon
Red Splashing Shadow
Take a White Pearl
In The Sky
Peppermint Swirling
Shadow,
Flaming From
Embers
To White and Red Tongues,
Licking the Dark Coals
Of the Night
A Flame
Red and White
Sends Embers Scattering Across
The Deep Black, Overhead
But A Golden Flame Rises,
A Bonfire To Cast
Shadow Around
The Gem.
A White Diamond Revealed,
A Golden Bonfire Raging
It Is Time For The Moon
To Rest,
Forever The White Diamond
Of the Night Sky.
Madison, 4th grade
Eclipsed moon hides in the trees.
And here is a draft of a poem I wrote alongside my students. I wrote two poems and combined them to make draft #3.
We all see the same moon.
All over the world,
Prague, Athens, Rome,
yellow, red, blue
sphere in the night sky.
I walked early this morning
watching the eclipse
of the full supermoon.
Minute by minute,
pieces fell from sight
like a giant hand
turning off the light.
In the shadow of a church steeple,
over desert hills,
setting behind our Lady Liberty,
a super moon eclipsed by our own
planet Earth.
As the moon set below the trees,
I thought of you
far away
seeing the same moon
in the same sky.
Margaret Simon, (draft) 2018
Yesterday I posted “Moon Wisdom” for Spiritual Journey (first) Thursday which included a poem by me around a painting by Michelle Kogan.
My post for #TeachWrite Chat this month is about sustaining a writing life by joining Poetry Friday. See the post here.
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Reflections on the Teche 