Silliness

I'm feeling like a little silliness today. Something to lighten the darkness of the week and make us smile. Enjoy!

The ever-so-lovely Linda Baie hosts the round up today at TeacherDance.

Hopscotch to Oblivion by Andy Wright, Sheffield, UK

The Termite 
by Ogden Nash

Some primal termite knocked on wood
   And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
   Fell through the parlor floor today.


The Ceiling
by Theodore Roethke

Suppose the Ceiling went Outside
And then caught Col and Up and Died?
The only Thing we'd have for Proof
That he was Gone, would be the Roof;
I think it would be Most Revealing
To find out how the Ceiling's Feeling.

And one for Halloween:

Knitted Things
by Karla Kuskin

There was a witch who knitted things:
Elephants and playground swings.
She knitted rain,
She knitted night,
But nothing really came out right.
The elephants had just one tusk
And night looked more
Like dawn or dusk.
The rain was snow
And when she tried
To knit an egg
It came out fried.
She knitted birds
With buttonholes
And twenty rubber butter rolls.
She knitted blue angora trees.
She purl stitched countless purple fleas.
She knitted a palace in need of a darn.
She knitted a battle and ran out of yarn.
She drew out a strand
Of her gleaming, green hair
And knitted a lawn
Till she just wasn't there.

Live the Questions

from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Live the questions.
Live into the answers.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

by  Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

enough

to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.

Read the rest here.

And stop by Merely Day By Day for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Georgia Project Wet

Michelle hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today at My Little Ditty.

Flat Rock Park, Columbus, Georgia.  (Photo by Dr. Dorothy Jelagat Cheruiyot)

I walked into the library this week to pick up some easy readers for a project. At the back of the room, a display wall had been set up. I wandered over and discovered some wonderful artwork and poetry by Georgia students.

Each year the Georgia EPA sponsors a program for teachers and students in the state, Georgia River of Words: Connecting Kids to their Watershed. The website says, "The River of Words Project is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live. After studying a watershed in their own environment, students express, through poetry and art what they discover." See the exhibit here.

One very creative student started her poem called "Fish" with these words: I dreamed/ I was a fern/

The national grand prize winner was a third grade student from Atlanta who wrote a beautiful haiku called "Dawn."

One of my favorites was "Tumble Down," in which the writer managed to describe her love/hate relationship to poetry with the image of falling water. She begins, " I'm the one who is writing this poem..."  In the stanza on stanzas, she says, "...they rush down like a waterfall,/ Like water droplets,/ My words fall like rain,/ Couplets gathering in a puddle below"

Such a great project. I hope you'll take a moment at the website. Especially if you're a teacher and haven't seen the project before.

It Tastes Like Dirt

Yes, that's what I said. Since I'm teaching five yoga classes each week, I'm expending lots of energy. My personal trainer daughter says I have to increase my calorie intake. I've been experimenting with different protein powder supplements. I like the healthier ones without additives, but most of them are sweetened with stevia. While it gives you sweetness without adding sugar, it leaves me with an aftertaste I don't care for. I'm not a big fan of sweet drinks anyway. I drink my coffee black and avoid soda altogether. This week my husband came home with a new one. Ugh! It tastes like dirt. Not sweet, which is nice, but it really does taste like dirt. So on with the search. I'm open to suggestions.

In the meantime, I came upon Alice Schertle's "Invitation from a Mole" as the perfect poem to go with my dirtful week.

Be sure to stop by the Poetry Friday Roundup at Miss Rumphius Effect where you can dig up lots more poetry today.



Invitation from a Mole

come on down

live among worms awhile
taste dirt
           on the tip of your tongue

smell
           the sweet damp feet of mushrooms
listen to roots
                            reaching
                                                  deeper
press your cheek against
the cold face of a stone

wear the earth like a glove
close     your     eyes
wrap yourself in darkness

            see

what you're missing


               ---from A Lucky Thing by Alice Schertle, c 1999, Harcourt Brace & Co.

End of the Month Accounting

This is just how I feel about arithmetic and balancing checkbooks and figuring out how many yoga students showed up in class this month and whether the rain drenching the front yard means I have to add more eggs to the grocery list.



Arithmetic
by Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head,
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
    many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--or five six
    bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from you head to your hand to
    your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice
    and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky--or the answer
    is wrong and you have to start all over and try again and see how it comes
    out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
    double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger and goes
    higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is when
    you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply--and you carry the multiplication
    table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one
    and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other, how many
    animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you five six seven
    and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask you mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
    two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
    you or your mother?

from Poetry for Young People: Carl Sandburg

Stop by Jama's Alphabet Soup for the Poetry Friday Roundup today.