Poetry Friday is with Katie at The Logonauts.
I hate snakes! I always have for as long as I can remember. I grew up running around the piney woods of Mississippi and now I live on a bayou in Louisiana. Snakes are a part of my world, but they terrify me.
This week one of the news stories that we poets responded to was about a snake coming out of a toilet in Texas. If you want to never look at a toilet the same way again, read this article. I decided against posting a picture on my blog. It was bad enough that I had to see it repeatedly on my Facebook feed.
The day this prompt was posted for Laura Shovan’s February ten found words writing project I was teaching cinquains to my students. They were writing them about their names. I chose to write about this snake menace. I enjoyed sharing the frightful article and resulting poem with them.
The rules for a cinquain are 5 lines with 2, 4, 6, 8, 2 syllables in each line.
rattle
in the toilet
camouflaged cryptic sign
surprising an innocent boy
Nightmare!
shovel
slamming down hard
killing snake in a clump
unknowing den of twenty three
silent
cellar
perfect hiding
for slithering secrets
wondering when their diamonds
will shine
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
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Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
Miller Outdoor Theatre in Houston’s Herman Park
Did you miss me? I spent the week at Rice University in Houston attending a Pre-AP training. While I gained a great deal of information on teaching pre-AP, this post is about the wonderful free stuff we experienced in Houston.
On Wednesday night, my colleagues and I joined my friends at the Miller Outdoor Theatre for a free musical performance of “The Best Little W*#rehouse in Texas.” What a great performance! And Reese entertained us with stories about this true history of Texas and how his great uncle frequented the place. Picnic blankets, big dogs, wine, and musical entertainment, it doesn’t get much better than that!
Matise from the Museum of Fine Art, Houston
On Thursday evening, we visited the Museum of FIne Art for free. Every Thursday the museum is free all day and open until 9 PM. While we were eating in the cafe, my friend Sarah joined us. Sarah is an artist and gave us a wonderful tour of the museum. While we were visiting, I brought up the puppy that Sarah rescued. She and Reese found a stray puppy along the highway from Galveston. The dog was in rough shape. They cared for her for 2 weeks and decided it was all too much to handle with their older (and perfectly mannered) dog Tilly. Sarah brought her to the poodle rescue. But her heart would not let go. So on Thursday, Marigold (so named because she was beautiful yet stinky) came back home to Sarah. We all turned and looked at Candice who had just been telling us about the loss of her dog in December. Right there in the art museum, a match was made. Before returning to our hotel, Sarah took us to meet Marigold. If I’ve ever seen love at first sight, this was it. Candice has two young daughters. What a surprise for them! We traveled home yesterday with 5 women and all our stuff plus one dog. Marigold was the perfect passenger. Now she has found the perfect home. As my husband likes to say about our rescue animals, “She has found a soft place to land.”
Marigold curls up with her new mom on the long ride home.
Happy Family: Marigold is now being called Coco for her fur that looks like coconut.
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Reflections on the Teche 