Past Poetry Posts
Winter 09 Poetry Posts
Memories of a Rainy Day
The gentle rhythm of rain strums our paneled roof
as I help my mother in the bright kitchen
kneel on a cushioned chair
in front of silver bowls
scattering sugar like a fine white snow
over ridges and canyons of moist flour.
I mold the scene with a fat wooden spoon
mapping the geography of my world
like when I burrow in my parents' huge bed
tunnel under layered sheets and flannel comforter
imitating the mole rats I saw once at the zoo
pink and wrinkled, burrowing into the warm darkness
of the familiar.
I emerge, poke my head into fresh light
bundle of blankets and laughter.
In the evening, when the last traces of cookie
have been scrubbed from my teeth
I sit folded in the scent of my mother’s lavender soap
And crisp pages
studying the soft pastel drawings and blocky letters
I am just beginning to understand
until my eyes slip closed and I drift
lulled by words and the quiet breath of rain.
Jemila Spain
Lane County
Grade 10
Age 15
PARTNER POEM
The Game
by Eavan Boland
Outside my window an English spring was
summoning home its birds and a week-long fog
was tattering into wisps and rags and at last
I could see the railings when I looked out.
I was a child in a north-facing bedroom in
a strange country. I lay awake listening to
quarreling and taffeta creaking and the clattering
of queens and aces on the inlaid card table.
I played a game: I hid my face in the pillow
and put my arms around it until they thickened.
Then I was following the thaw northward and the air
was blond with frost and sunshine and below me
was only water and the shadow of flight in it
and the shape of wings under it, and in the hours
before morning I would be drawn down and drawn
down and there would be no ground under me
and no safe landing in the dawn breaking on
a room with sharp corners and surfaces on which
the red-jacketed and cruel-eyed fractions of chance
lay scattered where the players had abandoned them.
Later on I would get up and go to school in
the scalded light which fog leaves behind it;
and pray for the King in chapel and feel dumbly for
the archangels trapped in their granite hosannas.
QUESTIONS FOR THE POEMS:
1. What does the weather's music say to the person you are now?
2. What other dreams found homes under the covers?
3. How often does the house turn transparent and let the weather in?
4. What happens during the pieces of day you have left out?
5. Can you speak the languages of sounds other than language?
Fall 09 Poetry Posts
After Harvest
The farmer rocked in his chair
his eyelids drifting down
He barely saw through the lenses of
his glasses now
As he grew ever more weary
the intricate rope of stars
blurred into a milky river of dreams
and hopes and wishes
The blanket of darkness did not
suffocate him
The air swarmed with secrecy and possibilities
His breath formed in translucent white blossoms
Rain started to sprinkle out of the sky
salting the earth -- the rich aesthetic feast
of the heavens above
He dropped the hammer on the porch ground below and
let his fingers subconsciously brush the grain of the chair
as the darkness of sleep clouded his sight
Jocelyn Wensel, Age 14
Oregon After Harvest The farmer rocked in his chairhis eyelids drifting downHe barely saw through the lenses ofhis glasses nowAs he grew ever more wearythe intricate rope of starsblurred into a milky river of dreamsand hopes and wishesThe blanket of darkness did notsuffocate himThe air swarmed with secrecy and possibilitiesHis breath formed in translucent white blossomsRain started to sprinkle out of the skysalting the earth -- the rich aesthetic feastof the heavens aboveHe dropped the hammer on the porch ground below andlet his fingers subconsciously brush the grain of the chairas the darkness of sleep clouded his sight Jocelyn Wensel, Age 14Oregon
PARTNER POEM for After Harvest
November 1968
Stripped
you're beginning to float free
up through the smoke of brushfires
and incinerators
the unleafed branches won't hold you
nor the radar aerials
You're what the autumn knew would happen
after the last collapse
of primary color
once the last absolutes were torn to pieces
you could begin
How you broke open, what sheathed you
until this moment
I know nothing about it
my ignorance of you amazes me
now that I watch you
starting to give yourself away
to the wind
Adrienne Rich
ASK THE POEMS, After Harvest & November 1968
1. What will the spring bring you?
2. How do you bring the sky inside of you, and what do you do with it?
3. How are your lives interlaced with trees?
4. What do you grasp when you let go of what you have or are?
5. What do you breathe in?
YOUR TURN, what poem or story will you write?
Spring 09 Poetry Posts
Planting Memories
I don’t remember, but I do.
How can one truth not be true?
Apparently, my memories have lied.
Apparently, the silence keeps me dry.
So I recount what I keep–
Every new memory before I sleep.
I work to fill an undone book.
So tomorrow I can see what I undertook.
And every morning I reread
Each little planted seed.
–Jana Barnes, Age 17, Lane County
PARTNER POEM
“These are the days when Birds come back”
These are the days when Birds come back–
A very few–a Bird or two–
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies resume
The old–old sophistries of June–
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee–
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear–
And softly thro’ the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.
Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze–
Permit a child to join.
Thy sacred emblems to partake–
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!
–Emily Dickinson, c. 1859
ASK THE POEMS
1. What are you showing me about the nature of memory?
2. What can be renewed from a season that has passed?
3. How are your speakers witnesses of change?
4. How does the past still seem alive?
5. What can be kept in the rereading of a story? What can be transformed in that rereading?
Winter 08 Poetry Posts
“YOUR LAUGHTER AND YOUR BONES THAT QUAKE”
Your laughter and your bones that quake,
Rustle in the leaves.
Grow, ungrow, dissolve and wake,
Whisper what you please.
You will be old and young again,
This circular world forever turns.
Ride with the rhythm, butterfly child.
Eternal, you cling to the earth.
–Phoebe Sheldon Young, Age 15, Lane County, Oregon
PARTNER POEM
MORNING POEM
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
–Mary Oliver (from Changing Light: the Eternal Cycle of Night and Day, edited by J. Ruth Gendler)
ASK THE POEM (Imagine what the poem might say/write if you asked…)
1. What are you showing me about the nature of beginnings?
2. What do you want me to know about the art of seeing change?
3. In your story, what constant strength do the earth’s cycles offer your speakers?
4. In your story, what does the earth want to be?
5. How are the butterfly and the beast alike?
Fall 08 Poetry Posts
MY CHILDHOOD HANDS
My childhood hands
Picked the forget-me-not word
Future.
It crawled like a spider
Across my leg.
In the inky black expanse of sky
I placed stars
With the tips of my fingers
And words shone
Like galaxies
Taking me places far away.
Words like purse
And bottle
Make the corners
Of my favorite constellations.
As I grew
My hands worked on cursive
And a model of our human heart.
The words capillary
Blue, and oxygen
Got stuck with red paint
Beneath my fingernails.
My digging at the beach
Resulted in the discovery of thoughts
Which lodged themselves
In my socks
The whole way home.
I looked out the window
And saw mystery, treasure, and hillside
Written in the clouds.
I dreamed in turquoise once.
I woke with white fingers
And a shiver down my spine.
In a library--
The sea of words,
A tidal wave spit me back on shore
With a penny
And the yin of a yang
In the palm of my hand.
-Chelsea Ingram
Age 16, Lane County, Oregon
PARTNER POEM
IMAGINATION
There is a dish to hold the sea,
A brazier to contain the sun,
A compass for the galaxy,
A voice to wake the dead and done!
That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.
Its flame can mingle north and south;
Its accent with the thunder strive;
The ruddy sentence of its mouth
Can make the ancient dead alive.
The mart of power, the fount of will,
The form and mold of every star,
The source and bound of good and ill,
The key of all the things that are,
Imagination, new and strange
In every age, can turn the year;
Can shift the poles and lightly change
The mood of men, the world's career.
-John Davidson
ASK THE POEMS
1. How will you carry colors home?
2. Where else will you look for treasure?
3. What is your next wish?
4. What does Tomorrow take from you?
5. What will you do with Dance?
Spring 08 Poetry Posts
Memories Of Simple Things
Graduations, job interviews and anniversaries
These days invade photo albums and insist on being remembered
But I prefer to think of the days that curl up in your lap and purr
Days that warm my face like a steaming cup of tea
Rainy days spent lying in the grass watching clouds drift
Some days seem significant—
But I prefer to cuddle up to the soft memories of simple things
-Katherine Westermann, age 18
Lane County, Oregon
Partner Poem
Across the Basin
Across the wide darkness
between the lights of the barnyards and houses
moving slowly, like just awake stars
swathers at night, glowing
in the alfalfa dust
each leaving a lined pattern through
invisible fields, rows which wait
the further geometry of hay bales.
If you stand on the ridge
the engines become a fine hum,
no less music than the mosquito
or midge, who, like you,
cannot resist the pull of warm air
suddenly alive with harvest.
–M.E. Hope
This poem appeared in the Jefferson Monthly, Sept. 2007 issue
Ask the Poems for Memories Of Simple Things & Across the Basin
1. How do you gather warmth?
2. How are you just-wake?
3. What are the gifts of your harvest?
4. How are your dreams like living creatures?
5. How is the ordinary world made extraordinary?
Winter 07 Poetry Posts
Softness
There was a softness on summer days
When fluff from cottonwood trees sift through the air
There is the softness of dresses
Satin and silk and gossamer threads wound together
And there is the softness of bruises
Darkening and bleeding gently beneath the skin
There is the softness of books, of snow
Of a single feather floating down from the sky
There is a softness in earth
In the quiet dead things rotting away underneath
There is a softness in old photographs
The ones greying and ripped from being folded
Old grey photographs soft with your face
Jennifer Donovan, age 16
Lane County, Oregon
Partner Poem
Cypresses
At noon they talk of evening and at evening
Of night, but what they say at night
Is a dark secret.
Somebody long ago called them the Trees
of Death and they have never forgotten.
The name enchants them.
Always an attitude of solitude
to point the paradox of standing
Alone together.
How many years they have been teaching birds
In little schools, by little skills,
How to be shadows.
–Robert Francis (1901-1987)
from Changing Light: The Eternal Cycle of Night and Day, ed. J. Ruth Gendler
Ask the Poems
1. What is the gift of your shadows?
2. How do you shine?
3. What do you want to remind me of?
4. How are you lonely?
5. How are you enchanted?
Fall 07 Poetry Posts
Me, the Disease
I am bruised knees
Waving at tie-dyed children through school windows
Falling out of trees of apples
I am red with confused fingers
I seem to be looking for a megaphone
I am dead dragonflies
I seem to be a train
I am wet footprints down the dock
I am catching the next wave out of here
It seems I am not the only one
I am fossilized peanut butter in a rented kitchen
I am making air graffiti where everyone can hear me
With my tongue
All-nighters high on nothing but thoughts
I am too tired to care
I seemed to be unplugged
I am doing cartwheels
I seem to have a jagged spirit
I am the kid asking, "Where did all the good people go?"
--Madisyn Schultz, age 14
PARTNER POEM
Sister Cat
Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.
--`Frances Mayes
ASK the POEMS
1. What do you know about restlessness?
2. In what ways do you recognize yourself?
3. How are you a stranger to yourself?
4. How does thought keep you company?
5. What is the gift of limitations?
Spring 07 Poetry Posts
Good Bye
Goodbye bare feet, I cannot live shoeless anymore
Goodbye cold water, I cannot stand to swim in March anymore
Goodbye cut off jeans, I don’t grow taller anymore
Goodbye times tables and timed tests; you do not scare me anymore
Goodbye tops of trees, I am too heavy to climb that high anymore
Goodbye black cat, you are long gone and you will not scratch me anymore
Goodbye redheaded little friend, you have grown up and do not want to tag along anymore
Goodbye lunchroom drama, I am far away in the library so you do not come find me anymore
Goodbye burned fingers; I have learned my lesson and will not touch hot elements anymore
Goodbye secret valentines, slipped into lockers when no one is looking, I don’t need to hide anymore
Goodbye to writing locked away secret poems, I am not afraid to read them anymore
--Katherine Westermann, age 17
Lane County, Oregon
On the Road
By the toe of my boot,
a pebble of quartz,
one drop of the earth's milk,
dirty and cold.
I held it to the light
and could almost see through it
into the grand explanation.
Put it back, something told me,
put it back and keep walking.
--Ted Kooser
(from Delights & Shadows)
Questions for "Goodbye" and "On the Road"
1. Why do you leave?
2. What do you take with you?
3. What are you afraid to let go of?
4. How do you welcome me?
5. How do you protect yourself?
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