In our school district, teachers have been teaching (and testing) for 9 weeks straight without a day off, and if you count all the way back to January, for 15 weeks with only a couple of 3-day weekends to catch a breath. This middle day of April is the end of one butt-kicking passage of time, and the beginning of the most exciting, most needed Spring Break I've had in...in...in EVER. We're going to Costa Rica! I'm thankful that I'll still be a presence during NaPoMo, thanks to TOMORROW's post by Gregory K featuring "The Playroom Floor Writes a Novel" at 30 Poets/30 Days, and thanks to Laura Shovan at Author Amok, who is including a new poem of mine in her NaPoMo project featuring Maryland poets TODAY!
For now, in honor of both the wildlife I hope to encounter in Costa Rica and the lifestyle I hope to enjoy there, a classic by Theodore Roethke:
The Sloth
In moving slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;
And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard--
A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He’ll sigh and hive his Branch a Hug;
Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.
~ Theodore Roethke
Today's roundup will find us all wrapped up in noodles by Diane Mayr at Random Noodling.
