Thank you to Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect for another Monday Poetry Stretch, this week about the moon. This is poem #4 of Free Verse Week II, continuing through Friday.
Where do poems come from? I don't know. Each one waits around, I think, like a bit of beach glass, hoping that someone will grab it. Sometimes a poem is not ready yet, and we throw it back to the sea until it is smoother, ready to be written down.
But if we throw a poem back, it is possible that someone else may find it and write it one day. This is much like a purchase we do not make but someone else does. When we return, we may be surprised - see my friend Emily's poem for one such book-story-poem at Tea and Krempets.
Students - today's poem idea is one that I've picked up on the beach over and over again. For years, looking up at the moon's full face, I have thought, "Wow. That looks like a pocket watch." Finally, today, this image found its poem. Keep this in mind as you live...any passing thought or line might be a part of your writing someday.
The rest of today's poem comes from several places. Many children speak the word "moon" as a very first word. I remember this from my own children, nieces and nephews, and our friends' children. Children all over the world speak this first word as they point up at their skies. "Moon."
I have been thinking about children from different places in the world because we have a beautiful niece from Thailand and an adorable nephew coming soon from Ethiopia. These children are in our families and still somehow always linked to their birthlands.
Soon our family will be learning from a few other families in our area who have been working to support an orphanage in Kenya, the Crossroads Springs Institute. Each of us is connected to so many across the world in ways we do not yet know. Who might you meet one day? Who have you already met who will touch your life a bit further down the path?
Soon our family will be learning from a few other families in our area who have been working to support an orphanage in Kenya, the Crossroads Springs Institute. Each of us is connected to so many across the world in ways we do not yet know. Who might you meet one day? Who have you already met who will touch your life a bit further down the path?
Several years ago, I read a poem by Margaret Tsuda in LASTING IMPRESSIONS, a classic and wonderful professional book by Shelley Harwayne. This poem, "Commitment in a City", speaks to our connectedness with others, whether we know them our not.
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