haze and heat - happy summer!

Greetings, Poetry Friday friends!  If you need a primer on what Poetry Friday is and why some of us have been showing up to it for 15 years (even after shorter and longer hiatuses. hiati? hiatusi?), you can read more here at Renee LaTulippe's blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.

I've just had a brief hiatus of my own, in part due to my attendance at the extremely informative and promising Writing for the Educational Market workshop at the Highlights Foundation last week. As I embark on this newish project of writing on assignment, let me give a shout-out to the workshop leaders--Paula Morrow, Jan Fields, Sandra Athans and Rona Shirdan--and to my fellow participants for an extended party of a very refreshing kind!

Those who know me won't be surprised that I'd like to contribute climate- and environment-related texts to the educational market. I wrote the poem below as a sample, sitting inside this week instead of outside on my porch as I prefer, to avoid the hanging haze of Canadian wildfire smoke full of particulate matter, or PM2.5 – a tiny but dangerous pollutant that, when inhaled, can travel deep into lung tissue and enter the bloodstream, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It's not the SAME as the blanket of greenhouse gases that's causing so much havoc in our climate, but boy, is this a visible, uncomfortable, concrete reminder that climate warming is all around all of us. This has big immediate consequences, like preschool summer camp having to be INSIDE!

I did not write this with the Poetry Sisters' monthly challenge in mind, to consider this quote:

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”
                                                                Robin Wall Kimmerer in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

But my poem does seek to carry kids through a doorway, from a familiar personal pain to a mind-bogglingly global pain, and from personal healing to global healing.

In other news, I must remark upon the joyful fact that this week, after years of imagining a scenario in which I get to teach poetry workshops as My Job, I taught the first two classes of Summer @ The Studio!  Now there's a good reason for fireworks!  Happy Independence Day, friends, and let there be liberty and justice for ALL.