A Poem a Day

With a few exceptions, we have actually been reading a poem a day for National Poetry Month. Everything from Shel Silverstein to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Somehow this sharing has been more interesting to me than all the poetry classes I ever took. There's a naturalness to the conversation. No agenda. No compulsion to "get" a poem or evaluate it.

Reading Shelley's "Adonais", for instance, started a whole conversation about myth. Because when I read a line about a Mother whose Son who lay pierced, I asked the girls who this might be.

I was thinking about Christ, of course, but Sara thought it was a mother and son from some myth she'd read (something about a boy who they tried to protect by getting rid of all kinds of dangerous plants... but they forgot about sharp holly and you can guess what happened).

We decided maybe the poem could refer to both Christ and the myth, as well as Keats, who the poem is actually elegizing. Such an unexpected conversation, and fun.

Anyway, here is Sara's Sunday poem (the girls have pretty much been writing a poem a day too... and I'm so pleased)...

Sunday

Rain wipes
away scattered
leaves falling on
cold asphalt
white sky
behind trees.

— Sara B.


Sonia on the Fence photo, by L.L. Barkat. Sunday poem by Sara. Used with permission.