Poetry Friday - It Could Happen

      Poetry Friday is hosted today by the wonderful Kathryn Apel from down under with lots of happy pictures of kids creating. Thanks, Kat! You can find her blog HERE!

        I know that you know many sites available for giving to help the people in Texas after this terrible weather tragedy. So many have posted those sites, and many have already given what they are able. I imagine we will be helping for a long time. 

        No matter how much humans try hard to live lives with joy and good will, some are slapped down and must find a way to rise and take a next step. I am touched when I see the pictures of people helping in every way, sometimes very tough ways, or people in shelters smiling to get their meals although they're wading through water because their shelter has flooded. I have a poem from William Stafford that I feel connects to us in this time. I hope you see that having a meal, even knee-deep in water, is what he's writing about.

It begins:

Yes 
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could you know. 

Read the rest HERE.

Crane Watching - Connections

         Tara Smith at A Teaching Life is the host for this winter's Poetry Friday. Thanks Tara. I hope the sharing today warms us all up!

           I enjoy reading the poems sent to my inbox every day, good to read, to wake me up with some wonderful words. And once in a while there is a strong connection, which happened this past week. We in Denver are in one of the flyways of the migrating sandhill cranes, and a long time ago, whooping cranes. Sandhill cranes are the most prolific cranes, while whooping cranes have made a comeback according to the International Crane Association from 21 to about 599.
           Years ago my class participated in a crane count in the southwest area of our state. We wrote curriculum for school children and were literally in the field every morning, counting, counting, and observing behavior. One morning we sat quietly behind corn stalks, watching behaviors. At that time, among the numerous sandhill cranes, there were two "odd" ones, a little taller, whiter, with a brighter red head, a whooping crane! I was hooked, and have followed their plight, and comeback, since that experience. 

Greater Sandhill Cranes

William Stafford Brings It All Together

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Mary Lee Hahn, at A Year of Reading, poet extraordinaire of the spare poem that says so much.  Thank you Mary Lee!

The March Slice of Life Challenge- 29 of 31 
           

      Tweet at #Slice2013

       And for two more days after this, slicers who’ve written and supported and read and commented for (now) 29 days, will stop, and return to their routines of regular life, a little weary, but very proud and thrilled at all that they learned, about themselves as writers and about others as a community.  It was a terrific month.

Gathering Inspiration for SOLC

               The Tuesday Slice of Life is hosted by Two Writing Teachers, Stacey and Ruth every single Tuesday.  Join us, and get ready for the March Challenge—beginning this Friday!  Thanks for all the work, Stacy and Ruth, plus all the community of helpers!

If you're on twitter, tweet at #Slice2013!

          It’s a good time to share something that will be both helpful and inspirational for our coming challenge, to write every day for ALL of March. I have started a writing group at my school and there are eight of us.  We’ll meet once a month to share and give support to each other.  We have chosen a book about writing to read parts of each time, a part of building our community.  The book is The Muses Among Us-eloquent listening and other pleasures of the writer’s craft, by Kim Stafford, William Stafford’s son, now teaching at Lewis and Clark College. 

A Favorite Anthology

All the Poetry Friday posts this week can be found at The Iris Chronicles with Karissa.

It’s been a long week, yet I am being renewed by attending our state’s annual Reading Conference.  Some days are better than other days as all of you know and I am happy to be able to do something different besides my regular job. 

If I cannot run off to a conference full of inspirational people and conversation and books, often I turn to a book that was gifted to me a few years ago by a colleague.  It is a poetry anthology titled Teaching With Fire, Poetry That Sustains The Courage To Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner.  Considering the year’s challenges to teachers and the newest steps to be taken with the common core standards, it seems that each teacher should be given this book, or at least a poem from it, for personal restoration when there happens one of THOSE days, sometimes weeks.  The book is organized into sections like Hearing The Call, Making Contact and Daring To Lead.  A brief essay from a teacher, sharing what makes the poem a special one in his or her life, prefaces each poem. 

As I browsed my copy of the book, I looked at the poems I had marked with sticky notes.  Three are from William Stafford, and those are the three I will share.  Each is one I love, and each connects to a personal story that makes me love it even more. 

     The first is The Way It Is, the whole of the poem found here.

          There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among

            things that change.  But it doesn’t change.

           People wonder about what you are pursuing.