Maybe it’s just my imagination, but the night sky seems busier and brighter in October.
(Or maybe it’s just that inTexas we close our eyes every time we step outside all summer long…)
These days the mornings are darker than they’ve been, the stars still brilliant, the moon high.
Today is our first parent-teacher conference.
It’s officially fall.

I start to get a hankering, right about now, to finish the year up right. 
To complete things, to put pesky, leftover tasks to bed.

This time around, that feels even more important since I’m going to use November to fast-draft a novel.
(I’m scared to even utter the words NaNoWriMo so humor me while I act like I came up with the idea and it just so happens to be in November.)

Anyway.

Before the end of this month, then, I have two poems to write — folks waiting on both of them — two picture book manuscripts to revise — again — and a newer picture book idea I’d like to see materialize. Plus I’m thinking I should occasionally walk the dog and feed my family. 

I’m never sure how I really feel about deadlines — even arbitrary ones like mine. 
Are they the ultimate motivator? 
Or the heaviest albatross?
The lit path?
Or the foreboding wall?

Right now, it’s a new day so I’m going with the positive.
The moon’s gone down and the sun’s come up.
We’ve got work to do…

Hello, friends …

I haven’t hosted Poetry Friday in a long time and, if the truth be known,
I’ve only been a mediocre participant for awhile.
So I’m really happy that we’re gathering here today —
it legitimizes my wallowing in words for most of a day, and I get to catch up with all of you…

It’s been a time of big and heavy around here. 
One of my closest pals lost her beloved sister this week, way too early.
Another friend finalized her divorce.
And then, the Chileans pulled 33 miners out of a hole in the ground — alive and well after 70 days buried and scared. 

Life is like this, so startling in its tragedies and its miracles.
And here we are, so ill equipped but carrying on — crying as we need to and laughing when we can.
Thank goodness for poems that seem to understand.

Here’s my selection for today:

Nurture

BY MAXINE W. KUMIN

From a documentary on marsupials I learn
that a pillowcase makes a fine
substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.

(Read the rest here…)

And here are yours:

BREAKFAST

Amy at The Poem Farm shares a wealth of poetic examples and musings, including her 199th original poem in a year-long daily poem effort!

Susan Taylor Brown keeps with the poetic theme, bringing us a Borges poem about Browning!

Tabatha Yeatts has been playing with reversos or, in her case, same-os, and Greg at GottaBook keeps it original with This is Not a Poem.

Tanita Davis broached both poetry and fiction with a piece by Marie Ponsot.

At Carol’s Corner, you’ll find a poignant piece by Henry Van Dyke.

Follow that with one of Andi’s trademark photo-and-poem conbos at a wrung sponge.

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading has a deserved day off, and is heading to the county fair!

And lucky, lucky Author Amok has been at The Dodge Poetry Festival (along with poet Kay Ryan).

So has Diane at Random Noodling, and she’s in with a full report. (Plus, from her other blogs, we’ve got a look at Cynthia Rylant’s Boris, a lovely Cynthia Rylant quote, and a bonus video with some cat poems, too!)

Linda Kulp has it out with stink bugs at Write Time.

You’ll appreciate the seasonal thoughts — and Wendell Berry’s poem — at Across the Page and ALSO at There is No Such Things as a God-forsaken Town — with a Robert Frost poem. Great minds think alike.

Deo Writer‘s been on retreat and wouldn’t mind going back (as illustrated by Thomas P. Lynch).

And talk about retreats, don’t you want to go to Hawaii with Jama Rattigan and Robert Louis Stevenson?

Karen Edmisten shares just a lovely Ellen Bass poem that maybe, in tone and theme, is not unlike the Maxine Kumin I shared.

Sara Lewis Holmes takes us to one of my favorite poetry sites for a poem by Julie Leschevsky.

And from another one of my Poetry Sisters, Laura Salas, this poem by Wislawa Szymborska. (Also, it’s Laura’s birthday so swing on by to wish her well!) Also, go get yourself a prompt at her 15 Words or Less and don’t forget to read the poetic responses!

The always lovely and thoughtful Jeannine Atkins discusses inspiration at her blog this morning.

And Father Goose IS inspired — by bluebells! And also check out his painted window at Bald Ego.

LUNCH

It’s National Poetry Month in Great Britian and our friendly fomograms wants us to know about g.p.s. — the global poetry system for found poems. Tres cool!

Elaine Magliaro has, as usual, shared some finely wrought originality over at Wild Rose Reader.

From the Windowsill has a seasonally-appropriate review today, of Scarum Fair.

The Stenhouse Blog brings us an original, dog-centric poem by a 2nd grader — pretty remarkable.

And speaking of dogs, Jeni Bell shares a Valerie Worth poem called…. drum roll, please…. DOG!

We have another review from Paper Tigers Blog — of a book called Around the World in Eighty Poems.

And finally — something to listen to, with our friends at TeachingBooks.Net!

DINNER AND DESSERT

Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe shares another seasonal poem — a delightful original. 

And finally The Small Nouns brings us a Deborah Garrison poem.

Thanks for being here everyone…

It used to be that my presence on the morning bike ride to school was kind of incidental.
I was there to double check for cars and carry backpacks that were especially heavy.

And the girls would chit-chat.
The entire way.
About who knows and what not.

But now, Tall One’s gone off to middle school and Small One’s got me, alone, as her target audience.
And our morning bike rides are streams of consciousness that Virginia Woolf herself would be wowed by.

This morning went something like this:

Small One: So, there’s this song that everyone, and I mean everyone, in 4th grade loves. Except me.

Me: What is it?

Small One: It’s called Tick Tock and it is not good. It has hypnotized people into thinking it’s good. But it’s not.

Me: Oh, gosh. Well. What don’t you like about it?

Small One: I wouldn’t even call it a song. She just wrote a song and got a computer to sing it. Actually, she probably got a computer to write the words for her, too, now that I think about it.

Me: Oh, yeah. I know what you mean, honey. That’s not really my kind of music either. 

Small One: Right. Because we like REAL STUFF.

And she’s right.
We do. 
Lots of people do.
I’m off to try to write some real stuff that I’m not going to have to hypnotize anyone to like.
You?

I love most of what Tony Hoagland writes, but there’s something I truly worship about this particular poem.
It is both beautiful and accessible.
Both story and metaphor.
Both humor and utter conviction.

It is, in the end, an impassioned, heartsick, lusty poet’s call-to-arms.
Feel, it says.
Connect, it urges.
Care, it pleads.

Personal

BY TONY HOAGLAND

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

(Read the rest here...)

Some of you may not be as addicted to TED talks as I am — 
I go on TED benders, week-long binges, 
carrying my laptop around the house,
hushing everyone. 

So. Now that that’s out of the way.
If that’s not you, perhaps you haven’t seen this one, a favorite of mine. 
Give it a look. 
For one thing, it’s funny.
And poignant.
My favorite combination.

But it’s also bold and built on statements like this one:

"Creativity now is as important in education as literacy."

And then it goes on to make them true.

Y’know, as writers we sort of have an academically-legitimate art (as opposed to drawing, say, or god forbid, modern dance or some such.) And still, most of us have stories about not quite fitting the mold. About having to tamp down or cut away our work and ourselves so that we’d be more, um, acceptable. But acceptable, folks, is overrated. There are so many other things I’d rather be. And I’d rather our children be…

We went camping this weekend and from the tail end it seems like an awful lot of work. 
Washing piles of smoky clothes.
Washing piles of gritty dishes.
Washing dirty dogs and kids and coolers and the whole lot.
Oi.

But the thing is, I’ve already emailed with my husband about our next go-round.
Because when you’re in the midst of it, there is just too much goodness to ignore.

Here’s what I came home knowing and remembering this time:

Fresh air is good for sleep. And even when it isn’t, it’s nice to lie awake in.
White egrets nearly glow in the dark.
Fire building takes architectural finesse and oxygen and dry twigs and time.
Raccoons can open even the most well-designed coolers.
Conversations that are longer and slower are both more interesting and funnier than the rushed kind.
Trees were made for climbing.
Swimming in really cold water makes you laugh.
Coffee outdoors is more of a luxury than coffee from a drive-through.
There are butterflies bigger than my hand.
Kids are even cuter with mud in their toes and leaves in their hair.
Tweezers beat burs.
S’mores can be made with Special Darks.
Walking sticks look as much like jewelry as they do like sticks.
Skinned knees and snagged clothes add character.
There are a lot more stars than just those few we see in the city lights.

Tonight I’m going to picture them as I close my eyes….

I’m on the run today, so just a quick note to say:
Nominations for the CYBILS are now open!!!
I’m on the poetry panel this year, so I want to put out a special call for those nominations,
but don’t stop there, folks!

What were your hands-down all-time top-notch favorite books of the year for children and young adults?
Nominate them!!!
 

We’ve been talking about book banning at our house and I promised to get it on record that my daughters are a little fired up about the whole thing.

Harry Potter?
Tom Sawyer?
The Lorax? 

Sheesh!
Is nothing sacred?

But it was when Roald Dahl got tossed into the fray that my Small One said,
"That’s it. Now I’m really kind of mad about this."

I’m with her.

For a nation that spends a whole heck of a lot of time and space talking about freedom, we’ve been a little lackadaisical when it comes to the freedom to read. The lists of books that have been successfully banned — pulled off of shelves, taken off of syllabi, shut out of libraries — is formidable. And, I’m not ashamed to say, some of my favorite books — and my kids’ favorite books — are on those lists. 

I’m okay with other folks not reading them if they don’t want to, but I’m not okay with those folks telling us we can’t read them. That’s just be a little bit too 1984 for our own good. Y’know?

So. 
This week is Banned Books Week.
Not a bad time to pick up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Or The Chocolate War.
Or James and the Giant Peach.
And read it. 
In public.
To your students.
Or your children.

To talk about how reading is a right, about how reading this book or that book is a choice — a choice we sometimes make with guidance or advice, but a choice nonetheless. One that ought not be taken away from us unless we want to get ourselves confused with the, um, regimes we consider dictatorial and unenlightened. We wouldn’t want that, would we?

One of the cruelest bits of cancer’s collateral damage at our house
has been the falling out my husband’s had with food.
And when I say falling out, I mean full-on break-up.
Thanks to radiation and chemo, cuisine became food became nutrition became survival became blended liquid concoctions taken via tube.

Now, though, as we step further and further away from his treatment, all that’s changing.
He can swallow.
He can swallow more than soup.
Not everything tastes like sawdust. 
Some things actually taste good.
(Enter angelic choir singing hallelujahs here…)

Our girls envision an entire feast month, during which every meal will be replete with treats, favorites and pleasures, once he’s up for that. But in the meantime, each day is a brand new experiment, both tentative and joyful, as nutrition slowly becomes food again and, slowly slowly slowly, becomes cuisine…

The Invention of Cuisine

BY CAROL MUSKE-DUKES

Imagine for a moment
the still life of our meals,
meat followed by yellow cheese,
grapes pale against the blue armor of fish.

Imagine a thin woman
before bread was invented,
playing a harp of wheat in the field.

(Read the rest here…)

We’re having our trees trimmed.
It’s always a little sad, those branches, tossed into the trailer to be mulched. 
This time around, we actually had to bring a whole tree down — an old, ailing pecan that’s been losing limbs and vitality for awhile, while still sucking up the sun and water its neighbor trees need.
It’s just a stump now, and soon even that will be ground up and gone. 

But there is new light coming in at that corner of the lot. 
And the oaks?
It might be my imagination but honestly, they look greener already without the deadwood.

It isn’t easy to do — tending to the things around us (our trees, our closets, our manuscripts) with enough clarity to know that sometimes parts of the whole have got to go, in order to let in light and oxygen, in order to let what IS there shine. 

If we don’t, we just muck along — dodging dead limbs, believing that we’ve not got a thing to wear, thinking that our stories are lost causes.

Sometimes with a little judicious pruning you find a bird’s nest, a book, the perfect little black dress.