Tree - A Mask Poem

Our Christmas Tree Before Ornaments

Photo by Amy LV

Our Christmas Tree With Ornaments

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - I am a Christmas tree hugger!  Last week, visiting our children's school, I saw a big beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby.  I wanted to hug it so much.  But I didn't.  I wish I did!  Next week...next week...  Now we have our own tree to hug.  When I was a little girl, I always would hug and kiss the tree. Yes, the needles were prickly, but maybe this prepared me for kissing my bearded husband.  

Today's poem is a mask poem, told in the voice of a Christmas tree.  We've always had real Christmas trees, and so I have always believed that they can think and feel.  I wonder if they think they look great all dressed up and if they enjoy being surrounded by a human family for a few weeks.  If I were a tree, I would. If I were a Christmas tree, maybe this is the poem I would write.

Being a writer allows a person to be many different things.  It is a joyous existence to be a pretender!

And just look at this beautiful photo of Linda Baie's granddaughter Ingrid.  Linda wrote to me, "We've been decorating & I read your poem to her-she 'got it' immediately, & hugged away!"  (Photo, as always, used with permission.)

Ingrid, Tree Hugging

Photo by Linda Baie 

(used with permission)

Tabatha is hosting Poetry Friday at The Opposite of Indifference today with Christina Rosetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter," a song with one of my favorite lines: Snow had fallen, snow on snow... Visit her rich blog to find out what's happening all 'round the Kidlitosphere today and all week long!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Goodbye to Christmas Trees

 

Ewes Taste Christmas - 2012

Photo by Amy LV

Students - it's that time of year when Christmas trees line the roadsides. When I was a girl, this was always a tough week. I'd want to keep the tree up for as many weeks as we could, and I fantasized about it becoming a Valentine Tree and a St. Patrick's Day Tree, and an Easter Tree. But one day or another, the needles would begin to fall, and out it would go...down the concrete steps, down the driveway, straight to the curb. And there it would lie, and there I would stand, kissing the tips of its needles and saying, "Goodbye."

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I have a soft spot for inanimate objects. I feel what I imagine they feel. You can see this in Pumpkin and Christmas Tree Lot too. Today's poem is about imagining the feelings of something else, and it's about goodbyes. So if you ever imagine what something else is thinking, or if you have a certain type of goodbye that is tough for you, that might be a good place to begin today's writing. Too, this is a poem written TO something, to a Christmas tree. Such a poem is called a poem of address. Is there anything you want to talk to? If so, then go ahead and address it in a poem!

You may notice that the first line of both the first and third stanzas match the song, "O Christmas Tree." This was a fun way for me to begin, by jumping into the words of a familiar song from the season.

Back in my girlhood days, I was comforted to know that our small town of Vestal, NY recycled old Christmas trees as mulch for town parks. Today I am comforted to know that our Icelandic sheep happily munch our old tree right up!

If you haven't yet peeked into how third grade teacher Mary Bieger uses writer's notebooks and seen Arya's entries...there's a new notebook up at Sharing Our Notebooks, my blog devoted to writer's notebooks.

Joann is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Teaching Authors. Have a great time in the garden of poetry!

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