Happy New Year and Welcome to This Photo Wants to be a Poem. Let the muse take you away for a few minutes to the swamp of Louisiana where Spanish Moss drapes from trees. This week I am using a photo from photographer Henry Cancienne who head out to shoot photos on New Year’s Day when the weather was misty and warm (balmy). Henry’s photographs are featured in my book Bayou Song: Explorations of the South Louisiana Landscape.
Henry takes pictures of both flora and fauna of South Louisiana. Let this photo help you create a small new year poem (perhaps your first of 2023; it is mine). Share your poem in the comments and write encouraging responses to other writers.
Mossy branch by Henry Cancienne.
Swamp fairies sprinkled dewdrops to wake up the forest. The new year was yawning.
As Autumn arrives, the arc of the sun shifts. The sky can show us the seasons if we learn to watch. One of my former students, a young mother, lives on a farm where they grow seasonal sunflowers. There’s a crop in the spring and this year, another in the fall. They open up on weekends for “you pick” days. I follow her on Instagram and have a totally romantic view of life on a farm. It must be hard work, especially with the hot, dry days we’ve had this fall. Nevertheless, this image popped up on my feed and I thought it wanted to be a poem.
Welcome to This Photo Wants to be a Poem. Respond to the photo collage with a small poem in the comments. Encourage other writers with comments.
I don’t know much about spiders, but orb spiders are out and about doing their thing and making amazing intricate webs. I took the first picture from my front courtyard. The web was huge and glimmering in the sunlight. I couldn’t really capture it with a phone camera. If you look closely, you can see the big black spider in the center.
On my Instagram feed I saw Paul Hankin’s photo of a similar style web. His caption read, “What might you create in your own little corner?”
In my classroom, we are answering “This or That” questions for attendance these days. So I put these images side by side and ask you this or that? Are you the type to hide your masterpiece in a corner, under and away from others who may harm it or misunderstand? Or do you place your art where everyone can see it, if only they stop long enough to notice?
Create a small poem around your thoughts today. Share it in the comments. Return, if you can, to leave encouraging comments to other writers.
By Margaret Simonby Paul Hankins
Weaving in my own corner Ever-winding path Behold a work in progress
This month’s Inkling challenge was mine to create. I invited my writing group to share any poem that they may have written to This Photo Wants to be a Poem prompt. I post a photo prompt once a week on Wednesdays. My photos come from my own iPhone photos or from Instagram friend’s photos, by permission.
I enjoy the craft of writing a small poem. Many of the ones I write bring about some deeper wisdom. Often I surprise myself with these, wondering where they come from. Today I am featuring bird wisdom poems. Nature offers itself to us with its revelation of truth.
Peek in on my Inkling buddies and see what they are doing with this challenge:
Always on the lookout for a photo wanting to be a poem, I pay attention to photography on Instagram. James Edmunds often posts amazing photos from his travels with Susan. James and Susan live in my neighborhood and have been friends of ours for years. James has a wit comparable to his good friend, author Calvin Trillin. He posted this photo of a heron taken in Gulf State Park, Alabama on his most recent jaunt into nature with Susan. Not only did the picture attract my eye, but his clever wordplay caption made me chuckle.
Inside every heron is… hero! by James Smith Edmunds
I’ve been playing with metaphor dice lately, and thanks to Taylor Mali, now have a set of make-your-own dice. I rolled and got this metaphor. “Kindness is a blue poem.” Even when you make your own, they stretch the brain cells.
Kindness is a blue poem written for the hero who makes me smile.
Margaret Simon, draft
Now it’s your turn. You can use the metaphor dice roll or not. As always, support other writers with comments. I am considering making a Facebook group to expand our horizons a bit. Let me know your thoughts. If you don’t already, follow me on Facebook @MargaretGibsonSimon.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
The last two weeks have offered a wealth of writing inspiration as we participated in #write0ut, a National Writing Project and National Park Service collaboration. Teaching gifted kids challenges me to find quality writing activities that will inspire, motivate, and engage my young students. #Writeout 2021 did not disappoint. And the resources will remain available on the website here.
My students have created storyboards with Storyboard That about geological changes over time.
Chloe’s storyboard about Louisiana’s loss of wetlands.
They wrote poetry. Things to do if you’re a puppy by Avalyn:
Pound on a window when you want to go on a walk, purr when you want pets. Go outside and dig when you’re bored. Lastly only bark when you’re in danger.
Avalyn, 2nd grade
On Friday, we ventured outside to the playground. At one school, there is a large live oak. My students sat underneath the tree for writing inspiration and gathered natural materials to create an art piece.
Katie gathers leaves for her notebook.
Avalyn observes a live oak tree.
Jaden’s are collage and poem
Golden petaled flowers spring up from the ground
Leaves slowly drift from each branch
Clouds painted on the sky’s canvas
Tall great trees with green leaves
Spider webs glisten in the sunlight
Squawking birds angrily yell
Fellow rodent squirrels sprint across branches
For nature For habitats For life
Jaden, 6th grade (form inspired by Irene Latham)
Another #writeout prompt asked students to make a poster. We used Canva and Adalyn create this one. On Canva it’s animated. You can view the animated version here.
After hurricanes and weeks and weeks of heat, things in the deep south are finally feeling like fall. Fall is one of my favorite seasons. Surprisingly not for the colorful foliage of today’s image, but for the scents in the air. Here in Louisiana, the sweet olive blooms. The satsuma ripens, and the sugarcane is harvested. A plethora of scent-sations. And don’t get me started on gumbo. If someone is making a roux, you can smell it for miles around.
This photo comes from the Northwest where my blogging friend Ramona Behnke lives and writes at Pleasures from the Page. We do not get this kind of color here. Most of our trees are live oaks and pines that stay green and cypress trees that drop brown fuzzies. But I do love a good photograph of fall leaves.
Fall leaves by Ramona Behnke
If the trees could play a melody the wind would sing, we’d know the secrets of the song and blend with harmony.
Margaret Simon, draft
Write a small poem in the comments. Let the muse take you where it will. I have no idea where my little poem came from. Writing is like that, mysterious and magical in so many ways. Be sure to come back and write encouraging comments to each other. I love it when someone sees something in my poem in a new and different way than I did.
Today is the National Day on Writing, an initiative of NCTE and National Writing Project. Use the hashtag #WhyIWrite.
Today I am cheating and doing this prompt backwards. I wrote a poem that I like from another Taylor Mali prompt. I remembered that I took a picture of the image I conjured in the poem. I am convincing myself that this is fair because I had the image in mind when I wrote the poem. Taylor’s website has a collection of fun prompts for teachers to use with kids. They work even with the youngest students that I teach (8 year olds). The one I used can be found here: Once I was a Flower.
Live Oak Branches, Margaret Simon
Once an owl lifted off from a tangle of branches; it rose above me like a hot-air balloon. It was fall and morning chill sprinkled fog over the bayou. There I was left floating alone– solid, steel canoe.
Margaret Simon, draft
Now it’s your turn. If you want to use the prompt, begin with Once and end with an inanimate object. Or just write whatever the photo muse brings forth. Be sure to leave encouraging comments for other writers.
This response to the Once prompt is from my student Jaden in 6th grade.
Once I saw a moth flew across my face in the path of others it was a fall sunset I stood still I was a light Jaden, 6th grade
You know how sometimes without any prompting from you a “memory” pops up on your phone, a photo that you’d totally forgotten about and most often, enjoy seeing again. Jogging a memory of another time and place. But I’ve noticed when it comes to flowers, the memories are a repeated vision of the flower I took a picture of yesterday. That happened to me twice this week. Blooming seems so miraculous and random and something we have little control over. It just happens. There is consistency in the blooming of a flower. They come back around again.
This week I took a picture of this amazing gladiola. I shared a small poem in response on my Instagram.
This May morning shows its gladiola heart sipping summer sun. Margaret Simon, #haiku #poemsofpresence
I found a similar photo in my phone album from a year ago. Last year during lock down when I was walking every day.
On Monday, I heard a call for poems from Kwame Alexander on NPR. He creates crowdsourced poems based on small poems people send in. This week’s prompt was from Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise.” I wrote and sent in this small poem.
Still, I rise with the sun following a path through watermint where the scent fills me.
Still, I rise to feel her gentle kicks inside a waterwomb knowing love grows from my seed.
Still, I rise to watch ducklings drop to waterglory following Mama hen through fervent streams.
Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
So I rise each day for a walk. I take photographs of flowers again and again. I will keep taking photos of flowers. Why not? They make me happy!
This Canna Lily came back after the big freeze. I take a picture of it every year.
Gardenia is my favorite scent. I’ve been unsuccessful at the growing of a gardenia bush. For now, I enjoy cut ones in a vase in the church hall.
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.
I live on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. I love teaching, poetry, my dog Charlie, my three daughters, and dancing with my husband. This space is where I capture my thoughts, share my insights, and make connections with the world. Welcome! Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 