a miracle exchange

May starts off with an exchange-and-respond challenge from Linda Mitchell: each of us sent off a poem to another Inkling and received a poem from another Inkling. Then, we were tasked to “Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem.” By chance, Mary Lee and I sent poems to each other.

She sent hers first--a golden shovel with a striking line from Jane Hirschfield's “‘It is night. It is very dark.’ " I sent her a golden shovel in return, with a Mary Oliver striking line, which you can read here. Mary Lee's poem left me speechless and kind of reeling with the feeling that I'd witnessed a miracle.

To begin every day with questions

is like leaving the house without an umbrella and

choosing to ignore the dark clouds. Answers

might speckle our glasses and plaster our hair, but are

not usually delivered by lightning, not

any more dangerous than the

bone-chilling business

of walking around the park, our hands free of

holding, free of grasping, simply open to the rain.

I got to thinking about how similarly the two of us do poetry, how helpful we are to each other with critique, how our tastes overlap and enrich each other's work (and that's before considering how alike we are as teachers, despite preferring opposite ends of the elementary age range). I thought about how suprising it is that two people who, without the internet and Poetry Friday would never have met, could end up so connected. I decided to combine our two striking lines and see what would happen. Here's the outcome.

Yep, a very fun challenge! Thanks, Linda, and thank you to my friend Mary Lee.

Here’s how the other Inklings met the exchange challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Mary Lee @A(nother) Year of Reading
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche


Thanks to Buffy Silverman for rounding us up this week!