Oops! My series highlighting the 7 finalists for the 2015 Cybils Poetry Award is...not allowed! As a new judge, I didn't realize that I shouldn't post anything at all. So I've now removed the two offending posts, and we must all wait until the official winner announcement on February 14 to read reviews and critiques by me and the other judges.
However...the chilly nature of one of the finalists put me in mind of an own poem from Pumpkin Butterfly: Poems from the Other Side of Nature. I shared it with my students this week after a very interesting discussion about Epiphany in the Christian story and the question "What year was Jesus born?"
Epiphany Forest
On January 6th, when the presents
and carols and cookies are over,
there’s one last thing to do.
Just as the Wise Men finally arrive
we undecorate, unlight, strip away the gold star.
On the morning of the 7th,
at the bare gray schoolyard
one by one our dying, drying trees,
still in their stands, are planted
among the cold poles of the equipment.
And on the 8th, when the
first snow finally arrives
we fly out onto the playground
faster than the flakes are falling
to marvel at our frosted Epiphany Forest.
©Heidi Mordhorst
Please join Tabatha for some more of the muscle and grace of great poetry--she's got the Roundup at The Opposite of Indifference today.
I ADORE that book - from the fox on the cover to the quirky poems within. And what a lovely Epiphany offering too!
ReplyDeleteLovely! Both poems give us such great images for winter's beauty and warmth. Also, the alliteration in both is so musical!
ReplyDeleteI loved these poems, too - winter delights, really. Sidman's poems are always much loved in my classroom.
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ReplyDeleteWhat a perfect way to describe the response to the first snow: "we fly out onto the playground/faster than the flakes are falling." (Elena is impatiently eager for the first snow.)
ReplyDeleteWinter Bees is such a beautiful book filled with imagery. I wrote the Cybils blurb about it for round one. I love your poem about the discarded trees making a forest. Ours, unfortunately, sit at the curb waiting. Sometimes they are picked up by fishermen to be used in the bayous and marsh to attract fish. I like it when they can be repurposed in some way.
ReplyDeleteI was a first round poetry judge. I do not envy you guys, having to choose one book from those seven fantastic finalists! Good luck! I always love Joyce Sidman's science poetry and WINTER BEES is no exception!
ReplyDeleteI was a first round poetry judge. I do not envy you guys, having to choose one book from those seven fantastic finalists! Good luck! I always love Joyce Sidman's science poetry and WINTER BEES is no exception!
ReplyDeleteI love Winter Bees and was so happy to meet Joyce at NCTE in November. Her poetry is so observant and full of evocative images, like that "sizzling ball" of bees. Your image of "our frosted Epiphany Forest" is wonderful, too. I hope you get snow soon. It's a dreary, rainy morning here in CT. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for these tastes of winter. I wonder if the winters we remember are going to turn into a story we tell our children, like growing up with black and white TV...
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