I meant to do something to celebrate Pentecost. Something with strawberries to represent tongues of flame. And balloons. I would probably have instagrammed it. But this is a busy time of year for teachers. Our whole family was still recovering from Atticus’s surgery and subsequent grumpiness. And, if you must know, I feel a certain [...]
Categories: General
The helpers have been in the news a lot lately: the people who ran towards the bomb blasts in Boston, the neighbor with McDonald’s. As much as I would want to be the person who runs to help after a bomb goes off, the truth is that I think I might have run the other [...]
Categories: General
“You Can’t Have It All” by Barbara Ras But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of [...]
Categories: Poetry
Last Tuesday, Atticus and I showed up at the surgical center before 6:30 (yes, that is in the morning) for him to get a second round of tubes. He’d had three ear infections in the two months since his first set fell out, and those ear infections were making all of us miserable. So, tubes. [...]
Categories: How to save a life
One of my pet peeves is when teachers tell students to be quiet because this is a library. Not anymore, I say! These days the library is a dynamic learning environment. Despite the silence you remember from your childhood (when I got in trouble at both my school library and the public library for volume [...]
Categories: Library
I had planned to find something other than this, but it’s really my favorite poem for Mother’s Day. “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins The other day I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room, moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano, from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, when [...]
Categories: Poetry
Where are we going, Mama? Where ARE we going, Atticus? To the library! That’s right! Atticus is in a phase where he asks questions that he already knows the answers to. Here’s a random sampling: What are you doing, Mama? What’s in your mouth? What’s that noise? Where’s Daddy? Librarians patiently answer the same questions [...]
Categories: Intentional Parenting
“On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light– a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. [...]
Categories: Poetry
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always, always — home, always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop and every window, of one country — all of us – facing the stars [...]
Categories: Poetry
We have been trying this new thing where we take Atticus into church with us. It’s been successful as far as church services with a two-year-old go. He is suddenly able to sit with us and play quietly for part of the time, and he likes the music. Plus, he gets to take communion and [...]
Categories: General,Intentional Parenting,Poetry
“Happiness” by Jane Kenyon There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place [...]
Categories: Poetry
Kathleen Norris read this poem last summer at the Glen – David Dwyer was her husband and she wrote about his death in Acedia and Me. I think fans of Madeleine L’Engle will particularly like this poem. “The Higher Arithmetic” by David Dwyer In heaven, I do not know that there are angels, but I [...]
Categories: Poetry
“homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don’t fit into little petty places. these hips are free hips. they don’t like to be held back. these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they [...]
Categories: Intentional Parenting,Poetry
“The Wedding in the Courthouse” by Kathleen Norris I don’t like weddings When you live here Long enough All the spindly legged girls Grow up like weeds To be mowed down: matrons At twenty-five, all edges taken off. When the music starts They’re led down the aisle In their white dresses And we celebrate sentiment [...]
Categories: Poetry
“Release” by Adelaide Crapsey With swift Great sweep of her Magnificent arm my pain Clanged back the doors that shut my soul From life. Fourteen years ago, Mike and I went, as usual, to a friend’s dorm room for our regularly scheduled Tuesday night TV watching. But instead of teenagers with big words and romantic [...]
I almost posted this poem on Friday, but I opted for William Carlos Williams instead. Today our pastor read it during his sermon, so it seems I should post it after all. “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at [...]
Categories: Poetry
“Peace on Earth” by William Carlos Williams The Archer is wake! The Swan is flying! Gold against blue An Arrow is lying. There is hunting in heaven— Sleep safe till tomorrow. The Bears are abroad! The Eagle is screaming! Gold against blue Their eyes are gleaming! Sleep! Sleep safe till tomorrow. The Sisters lie With [...]
Categories: Poetry
I saved this poem for Poem in Your Pocket Day so I could tell you all about it, but the day was long and my time is short so I will have to save it for another day. This is the poem I carried today. The news in the world has been bad, and it [...]
Categories: Poetry
A short poem today, because it is late and I am tired. Tomorrow is poem in your pocket day! Don’t forget to carry a poem with you to share. “Window” by Carl Sandburg Night from a railroad car window Is a great, dark, soft thing Broken across with slashes of light.
Categories: Poetry
If stress reveals who we are, then I am a completely awkward middle school student. Difficult news renders me unable to move, words frozen on my tongue. After my dad died, I thought I had learned which things were helpful to say; in my head, I am a paragon of grace and kindness when called [...]