Poetry

Valentine for Ernest Mann
by Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

Where does poetry hide in your life? Where do you find inspiration? Do you find it in people, in things, in sports, in food, in color or smell or texture? Do you find it in all these things? Make a list and then try to turn it into a poem.

Poetry Hides
by Elizabeth Thomas

In the shy voice

of a 2^nd grade boy

who says if he could be any sound

he’d be the inside of a train whistle

where it is cold and small.

It hides in the silent glare

of the big, bad boy in the back row

while I talk to the class

about how to write a poem,

then again later when he asks

“Yo, Miss, did I do it right?”

and I don’t need to read what he wrote

to know it is exactly what I’d hoped for.

It hides in yellow forsythia

sprawling by the side of a highway,

the smell of earth

after a summer rain fall,

red and orange leaves

crunching beneath my boots

on a crisp autumn day,

a field of untouched white snow,

a stark blue sky,

a cup of cocoa by the fire.

It hides in the sweetness

of the words “Read it again, Nonie”

spoken by my granddaughter

as we sit together turning pages.

It hides in the phone messages

my mother leaves,

ending hesitantly with “I love you.”

These words scraped with grit,

tossed off a cliff,

softly cradled in an updraft

to finally land in my ears

as a poem.