Read Aloud for letter due on 10-30
A Valentine for Ernest Mann
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
© Naomi Shihab Nye. Used for educational purposes.
Letter prompts:
Write about an unusual gift you've given, or received.
Write about a time you reinvented something your life gave you.
Where do your poems hide?
Read Aloud for the literary letter due on 10/9
Autobiography In Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down another street.
Read Aloud for letter due 10/2
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins
More poetry by Billy Collins:
http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/poems/
Swingset
Wood rots,
ropes fray,
metal rusts
memories stay.
It stands there
deserted in the midst
of many times climbed
and swung from.
Sometimes it was a ship
escaping from the storm.
Other times, many times,
it was the convertible a friend and I
drove to McDonald’s.
Now years of playing cease.
It’s just the goal for flashlight tag,
where people sulk after losing
or
preen after winning.
At times I want to shed
my childhood,
but somehow I can’t cart it away
to the dump, where
swingsets are shredded, where
times past
can’t ever
return.
~ Grace Walton
ropes fray,
metal rusts
memories stay.
It stands there
deserted in the midst
of many times climbed
and swung from.
Sometimes it was a ship
escaping from the storm.
Other times, many times,
it was the convertible a friend and I
drove to McDonald’s.
Now years of playing cease.
It’s just the goal for flashlight tag,
where people sulk after losing
or
preen after winning.
At times I want to shed
my childhood,
but somehow I can’t cart it away
to the dump, where
swingsets are shredded, where
times past
can’t ever
return.
~ Grace Walton