#mayku

 

white birds flap on screen
seventeen syllables
give or take a few



I've been intermittently com-posting some haiku on Twitter, late inspired by Liz Garton Scanlon's 11-year April tradition.  Why not round them up, now that I've planned how to get peacefully and productively through all the meddlesome, tedious EOY assessments and all the emotionality that comes with the end of another year of 2nd grade?

By the way, if you haven't read this piece on that complex emotionality for teachers, please do.  If you're not a teacher, you'll learn a lot, and if you are you'll feel deeply and well represented.


For Teachers of Children in Poverty, The End of the Year Brings Mixed Emotions

So here they are:


painted lady chrysalis
leaks neon blue and scarlet
inner beauty


alone, sun on my
burger, glass of rose'
cause for poetry

    (in response to this one from @lisagerlits)
     I ought to have a dog
    to walk--for poetry's sake
    if not his or mine



the round cans wax
then wane to empty drawer
cat food calendar


fat green
molecule of miracle
first tomato


ivy gone awry
persistent oils, tangled roots
hard learned lessons ooze


hundreds of tiny
deeprooted weeds sprout each night
they will not be stopped


the flaming plane
is not "out of the blue"
we see it coming


waiting all day
for the thunder to roll
sun just carries on

I'm so late with my post this week (didn't know I was going to do one!) but even so I'm sure that our host and my friend Margaret at Reflections on the Teche won't mind my tardiness. She has pi-ku so I'll be in good company!

all the world...

...has entered my classroom in the form of 16 children who are, in three cases literally, angels. (I have an Angel, an Angela, and an Angelina!)  This year, in addition to my old favorite Roxaboxen, I began the year with the picture book poem All the World by our friend Liz Garton Scanlon.  This poem (even without the Caldecott Honor illustrations by Marla Frazee) touches the sacred for me, and the way I explained it to the shiny new second-graders sitting on my shaggy green carpet is that it gathers up many small, ordinary things to make us feel one big true thing.  Here's an excerpt.

All the World | Liz Garton Scanlon

Rock, stone, pebble, sand
Body, shoulder, arm, hand
A moat to dig, a shell to keep
All the world is wide and deep.

Hive, bee, wings, hum
Husk, cob, corn, yum!
Tomato blossom, fruit so red
All the world's a garden bed

Tree, branch, trunk, crown
Climbing up and sitting down
Morning sun becomes noon-blue
All the world is old and new
....
Everything you hear, smell, see
All the world is everything
Hope and peace and love and trust
All the world is all of us

**************************
After I read this, there was this long pause, and then Andy (yes, I have an Andy too), raised his hand to say, "That book almost made me cry."  There was reverence in the room.

And that, my friends, is what they are ALL like this year:  full of hope and peace and love and trust, open-hearted and ready.  It's another miracle.

Just in case someone had thought to set this beauty to music, I searched a little and found my way to this, which plays with the end of the book to fit the music but comes out pretty wonderful.

SchoolTube video


Thanks to Liz, and thanks to Penny at A Penny and Her Jots for hosting today, and thanks be to the ebb and flow of the world that every year is different!