#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!

#knowwhenenoughisenough

Cranking along, enjoying the mini challenge of one haiku per day, I addressed everything from our ill-behaved President to the 200th anniversary of THE Christmas carol.

Dec. 22

hope a lump of coal
in your stocking ruins the golf
naughty selfish boy

Dec. 23

smoke of wood fire
smells like home to primal noses
as Silent Night to ears


Oh, yes--I was having a lot of satisfying creativity and community writing #haikuforhope, and then on top of my injured foot, which wasn't getting better, came this:

Dec. 24

high holiday
laid low by fondue and flu
gentle morning joy

I'm blaming the flu shot I got last Saturday, which I did only to pass the time more productively while I waited in an urgent care center for an x-ray which might show why my injured foot wasn't getting better.  I haven't been terribly ill--but it does feel like every single 2nd grade germ of 2018 has just been waiting for an entryway, and the little hole where the flu shot went in was it.  My Killer Immune System, of which I am still very proud, has been working overtime, but suddenly I needed NOTHING on the horizon.

Dec. 25

music of the season
jangles, twitterjabber jars
now for long quiet

And I also came to realize that all that hanging around on Twitter liking things was getting in the way of my real intent for this break, which was to read some books.  So I just decided to stop.  Just like that.  So today, here are the last of my #haikuforhope and me experimenting with a challenging philosophical conundrum: quitting shit.  [Pardon my rhyming.]

The question I'm wrestling with is: Where is the line between dependability and flakiness?  What is the ratio of external appearances to internal integrity in that calculation?  When is it compulsion and when is it commitment?  Can you be a good person (and I think I know what that means, having watched all of THE GOOD PLACE so far) if you quit something you promised, or even just intended--to yourself or others--that you would do?  Is it okay to not do things because you don't feel like it?  What kind of lesson is that to teach your children? And most fundamentally,

When is enough enough, and why would this be so hard for me to figure out?

Dec. 28

it is my son who
"has trouble stopping," I thought
tyrant intentions


Donna JT Smith is our round-up host on this endingbeginning Poetry Friday of the year.  See you in 2019!

UPDATE 1 HOUR LATER: As always there is wisdom to be found at Tabatha's blog The Opposite of Indifference.  Here's a quote I just found in her Christmas Eve post, which seems to suggest starting from a position of NOT doing things:
Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.
~Gustav Holst

 

#evenmorehope

Wishing all a merry and bright Solstice!  Our family's 12 Nights of Yuletide begins this evening with a special meal and a candle-lighting ceremony (see Dec. 20 below), so all I have time for in between cooking and tablesetting is to recap my #haikuforhope this week.  Thanks again to Catherine Flynn and Mary Lee Hahn who ignited this little practice for me again this year.

Dec. 15 

holiday party 

I can’t enjoy the spiced punch 

emptied water jugs

Dec. 16 

pins and needles 

weary foot won't take the weight 

limbs stage a slowdown 

Dec. 17 

butter flour fruit spice 

rows and columns of goodness 

edible calendar

Dec. 18 

blur of class play grades 

parties actual meetings: 

a girl could lose a day  

Dec. 19 

weeks of drought 

dry arroyo of bedroom 

a flood of daughter

Dec. 20 

tradition, you bully 

meet me at the corner of 

must and love

Dec. 21

dark clock ticks 

repeatedly remind myself

tomorrow is longer

**********************************

Three and half more hours of school...I look forward to a full tour of blogposts this weekend, rounded up for us by Buffy at her blog.  Joy to you all!

#haikuforhope

Some of us in the Kidlitosphere, in the Twitterverse, are spending December haikuing, just as in 2016, led and inspired by Mary Lee, we haikued for healing. (I now regret attempting to use haiku as a verb.)

This year our friend Catherine suggested modifying our daily writing practice to #haikuforhope, and that is certainly resonating with me...although it does appear that when you're trying to produce a pithy moment each and every day, just about any topic comes to seem like a commentary on hope, if not actually hopeful.

Here are mine so far this week:




Dec. 1

last red branch exhales
catching up in slow motion
refusing to rush

Dec. 2

Sunday morning Spirit Play
we all watch as fog lifts
in a water glass

                                                           Dec. 3

                                                           nothing can pierce this
                                                           afternoon dark
                                                           not even 12-foot Rudolph

Dec. 4

seven-year-olds sit
in silent rows, testing
cold winds test the glass

Dec. 5

unwinding the light
tightening the twinkle
window candles spark

Dec. 6

"we are in trouble"
small hands mold
plasticene landscapes



 

Dec. 7

Tuesday despair
Friday giddy energy
estrogenic seasons


Participants in this December tradition are Catherine Flynn @flynn_catherine, @MaryLeeHahn, @MargaretGSimon, Linda Mitchell @LindaMitch2783, Molly Hogan @mbhmaine, Julieanne Harmatz @jarhartz, Jone MacCulloch @JoneMac53, Jean LaTourette @mz_lat,  Linda Baie @LBaie, Carol Varsalona @cvarsalona, and @mandyrobek....and probably more.  Join us!

And join the Poetry Friday round-up (what is that? go HERE to find out) hosted by Liz Steinglass today, where there's all kinds of merry and bright.

haiku summer

Well, hello.  Long time no see...a VERY long time, and the glorious feeling of finally being on summer break (which really only came over me fully yesterday) is so consuming that I actually FORGOT that it was not just Friday but Poetry Friday until just now, as I was studying the Bare Bones School of Haiku, Lesson 6.

I found my way to these extremely helpful lessons via Robyn Hood Black's blog, where I knew I would find good resources.  Until Wednesday, I didn't know I would need them, but the moment I began entertaining the notion of a poem-a-day project this summer, a poem aspiring to be a haiku popped out.  I've known for a while that I was still laboring under the 5-7-5 oversimplified haiku form that I learned as a 3rd-grader, but I hadn't had a chance to learn a more authentic approach to haiku in English. 

Now I have the chance, and by Jane Reichold's Lesson 5 I was able to improve my initial Wednesday effort, and so I offer this welcome to my Haiku Summer (even as I begin a third major revision to my WIP).

yellow plastic frying pan
in the pool
the water sizzles

I'm also delighted to be participating this year in Tabatha's Summer Poem Swap. I received a doubly well-crafted spirit animal poem from Irene Latham, and I sent a double acrostic to close out the school year  to my first partner, fellow teacher Linda Baie.  What fun to get and send real mail!

                                        
                              <poem removed for submission>

Thanks for visiting my juicy little universe today.  Find more summer poetry goodness with Jone at Check It Out!

cooling off and catching up

Well, after an unplanned hiatus of some weeks, I'm back, drenched in triumphant relief (I made it through the first full-time year since 1998!) and in summer solstice sweat, proudly sharing a small, cooling moment mined from the piles of folders and composition books and other Stuff from School.

Here is Duncan's haiku, which was in part a 3rd-grade cursive-writing exercise.  Dunc's not so practiced at pacing his cursive yet and ran out of room on the transparency he was writing it on--that's what all the blank space is for.  Hence the nontraditional line breaks, which almost fooled his teacher into thinking it didn't fit the prescribed 5-7-5 syllable pattern. 

Jack-Frost's Reign

Thorny vines reaching
Plants drooping under
Jack-Frost's spell of months
of ice










Here is the rubric by which his work was scored:

"My poem follows the rules of Haiku (3 points)
My haiku describes nature with descriptive words (2 points)
My handwriting is neat (1 point)
My picture describes my poem (1 point)
My poem has a title (1 point)"

 -- for which last Duncan got 0 because he didn't include the title he selected above, resulting in an overall score of 6.5 out of 8 or a B.  I love teachers, and we loved Duncan's teacher, but I always want the rubric, if poetry must have one, to include something like "My poem helped me see the world and use language in new ways, bringing joy to me and my readers."  Self-assessed, of course!

Happy summer to all, and see you over at The Poem Farm, where I discover that Amy is sharing a song written with Barry Lane that captures, more catchily and poignantly, the exact same point that I'm making here about Duncan's "number."  Thanks, Amy and Barry.

Addendum, 8:47am:  Duncan came in as I was playing the song for the third time.  When it finished, he said, "Wow.  Montgomery County Public Schools certainly needs to hear this."