Litany for Pines

 Happy May Day and Poetry Friday! Elizabeth Steinglass has the Roundup today and offers a great video where she shares poems from her terrific book Soccerverse. Many thanks, Elizabeth!

This past week we had to do a difficult thing; we cut down 10 pine trees very close to our home.

We have lived with these trees for forty-two years, and they were huge when we arrived. This winter strong winds sheared off a thirty-foot top, which, thankfully, did not land on the roof. So it was time to say goodbye with gratitude. 

We spoke this litany to the sentinels who stood with us for so long.

 To Our Pines

To pines who have sheltered us from wind and snow

whose shade has cooled us

we offer gratitude.

And let you go.

For birds’ nests and sighing branches,

for holding swings, wind chimes and clothes lines

we offer gratitude.

And let you go.

To friends who’ve grown older with us,

given us oxygen to breathe,

we offer gratitude.

And let you go.

May your spirits remain close,

your whispers stay in memory,

your legacy bless what shall come anew.

We let you go.

Poetry Friday

The Round-up today is at A Teaching Life.

BUILD A POEM is the poster name for my upcoming poetry workshop for kids. We’re going to use Patricia MacLachlan’s beautiful book Word After Word After Word as a springboard to create our own poems. Ms. Mirabel talked about the importance of landscape, so we’ll start there. Nephew Mike Beane photographed this lovely tree across from the Maine home we both grew up in.

A dear furniture maker friend donated wood blocks and scraps. We’ll talk about this wood and how once it was growing as a tree. We’ll brainstorm what the tree’s landscape might have looked like.

Poem #1 Be the tree. On the wood, write a poem showing what you saw, felt and heard in your landscape.

We’ll brainstorm words and phrases for our own personal landscapes.

Poem # 2 Turn the wood over. Write a poem that makes the reader feel your landscape.

My own landscape poem:

Sandpit

Warm sand sifts through my hand.

I sculpt curved roads,

plant trees of sweet fern,

then climb the pine to my platform

and snug my back against bark.

Year after year, I bury broken dolls.

The last hole I dig is for my dog.