Imagine Imagine Imagine

Smiling Moon

Stamp & Photo by Amy LV

Students -  Happy World Read Aloud Day!  I love to be read to, and I love to read to others. Today, thinking about people reading to people all over the world, I remembered many joyful years of reading to our three children.  I remembered how sometimes my husband would stand in the doorway listening too.  I remembered how when he read, I would stand in the doorway and listen.  And then I thought about our moon, hanging so brilliantly outside each of our windows.  I imagined the moon as listening and learning, smiling up in the sky.  Just think of how many books the moon has heard!

Sometimes a bit of writing begins with a truth and then travels into the territory of wonder and wish.  Of course we can always write what we know.  But too, we can write of the truths that might be, the truths we imagine, the truths we hope and love to consider.  As writers, we may begin in truth and end in the country of our dreams.

What do you know to be true?  Where might this lead you?  Sometimes the only way to know is to write your way into knowing.

Tabatha is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup at The Opposite of Indifference, with two thoughtful poems, both of which I will carefully copy into my paper notebook today. Please know that the Poetry Friday community shares poems and poemlove each Friday, and everyone is invited to visit, comment, and post.  And if you have a blog, we welcome you to link right in with us.

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Read Aloud Today with Poem #343

Students - I wrote this poem in celebration of a special day, the first World Read Aloud Day.  Sometimes people write poems for important occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, and all kinds of holidays.  This is what I did today.  What occasions do you have coming up in your life which might deserve some writing?

Today on World Read Aloud Day, LitWorld asks, "What would you miss most if you could not read or write?"

The poem "How the Stars Came Down" by Pat Schneider helps me answer LitWorld's question.  This poem describes a quiet and magical evening watching shooting stars, wanting not to leave camp, but having to go home to tenements, / asphalt and streetlights....  The poem ends, 

What I didn't know that night

in my bedroll at Sherwood Forest Camp

was that when I got home,

home wasn't my real home any more.

I had a new home in my remembering

and it was dark and safe and beautiful

with shooting stars still falling all around.

For me, every book, every article, every story, every poem is a "new home."  And I can visit these places in my mind and heart and soul whenever I need them.  As a mother and teacher, I believe that one of my most important responsibilities is to build such "new homes" inside of the children I meet and care for each day.  

We never know when our reality-homes will crumble for days or weeks or years, and it is good to create safe havens of words within ourselves and those we love.

Fight for Global Literacy with LitWorld, and celebrate World Read Aloud Day today by reading aloud to someone you know. 

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