Poetry Friday - A Teaching Memory

              Poetry Friday is with Carol Varsalona HERE at Beyond Literacy Link.  She's sharing the fabulous winter-warming postcards she's received in our postcard exchange started by Jone McCulloch. Thanks, Carol, for hosting! 

            Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! ❤️

           I am participating in another tradition, too. It's February, Laura Shovan's birthday month celebration where a group of poets share prompts every day and write to them. It's the 11th year and I've written with everyone every year. It's a challenge, to find new ideas, to take time to read as many poems as one can during the day, and offer at least a brief comment. But it is always a surprise to see what thoughts emerge, and what poems I write. And, it's always a joy to read others' poems, too. The theme this year is "story", and one of the days since February first, the prompt centered on textiles telling stories. Here's what I wrote:

         I taught middle-school gifted children in an independent school & every class traveled overnight in the fall & the spring, day trips, too. One of my last classes spent time in New Mexico with Pueblo Indians, one of the days weaving all day with a small group of weavers. When we returned home, we started a class weaving, working on it for weeks, each one adding something that recorded an event or something special just to that one student. I can't remember what they all mean but know that we loved when someone added to it & then, during the last week of school, we tied it off!

Weaving Our Class

 

The warp shapes our year

While the weft comes slowly

Piece by learning piece

each child adds a part

sometimes from the brain

often from the heart

Mix the colors

Add the trinkets

A story mixture,

Re-mixing us

Into a whole.

 

Linda Baie ©

           Wishing you all a time for gathering pieces of your days to weave together in your own lives.