I added a few Book Spine Poems to A Mother’s Garden of Verses. I contributed a post to my corporate employer’s national blog. In that contribution, I created examples of my own and recruited a student to contribute another.

Meanwhile, I read posts and editorials and commentary about Autism Awareness month. Awareness Months bug me. The concept of raising awareness, of shouting “We are here! We are here!” just doesn’t cut it any more.

Instead of posting for Autism Awareness Month, I’ll stick to celebrating poetry.

Most of my examples were winter poems because I wrote them for a lesson I taught at the end of March. The month of March in Wisconsin managed to come in and go out like a lion this year with cold, colder, and coldest followed by snow mixed with rain and sleet. We were still wearing our fingerless gloves and pulling out our cubicle blankets on windy days. When the social media folks wondered why the sample poems were all about winter, I reminded them that we had just exited (and might still see signs) a long, long season.

The student had offered ideas in class, so I asked her to revisit that poem and complete it for me. My favorite part comes in the last two line. What do you think?

Enter a world full of everlasting snow

Freezing the water, when you try to row

Giant blizzards coming, though very rare

Hills of snow beyond compare

Ice falls in mounds at my feet

Jabbing at my body, the cold stings my cheek

Knowing how endless we may seek

Lies spring around the corner, waiting to astonish me?

May the snow melt soon, much to my glee

Nevermore, calls Mother Nature

O’er the hills and through the forest in her nurture

 

Me? I know she’s brilliant. Maybe we’ll see her work published some day.