This month, I’m tagging along with Christie, Margaret, Jone, Mary Lee, and other writers to play with poetry for National Poetry Writing Month. I’ll be creating poems using haikubes, metaphor dice, magnet poetry, paint chips and anything else that catches my fancy.
Today, my stack of paint chips met Naomi Shihab Nye’s wonderful poem, “A Valentine for Ernest Mann,” and Georgia Heard’s wonderful quickwrite assignment from Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School. Paint chip color names are in bold.
poetry hides in places you expect:
in the soft bronze glow of the cypress grass
in the sunbeam of a blue bird morning
in the eucalyptus tree by the calming green waters
in the night skyscraper silhouetted against eternal moonrise
look closely at the ruby petals of the hibiscus bloom
at the sunlit meadow of prairie grass and prairie sage
poems aren’t hard to find
look closer for the poem hidden in the chance of showers and the drizzle
in the tabby cat gray of warm flannel
in the brown button on Dante’s cardigan
in the speckled eggs, on the sandy feet,
in the burning afterglow of a cathedral morning
Yes, we can find poetry anywhere we look; all we have to do is recognize that it is there. The vivid colors really bring your poem to life.
My favorite is the tabby cat gray of warm flannel…. makes me feel contented and warm
Gorgeous! I agree – poetry can be found anywhere.
Georgia Heard has such great resources (and poetry)
This is a lovely poem. The nature imagery is so pretty. I don’t have the Heard book, but I want it. And I notice you did not mention paint chips as a place poems hide. Still, I kept thinking about the hidden poems in paint.
Beautiful…I adore both Georgia Heard and Naomi Shihab Nye. Thank you!
How beautiful! I’ve never been able to imagine how I might use paint chips for inspiring poetry–until reading this. Thank you for sharing!