Tap Dance

flickr cc photo by Gary J. Wood

north wind 

oak leaves tap dance 

down the street 

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017

Mother Nature Gets a Few Things Off Her Chest

photo via unsplash

Mother Nature Gets a Few Things Off Her Chest

The human race
is a disaster.
They use their big brains
to foam with wrath
about fake news and propaganda and change.

They ignore me when they aren't
paving
mining
fracking
polluting
damming
deforesting
acidifying
dumping
obliterating
or otherwise
killing
me.

I am the truth.
I will remain
when the last earthquake
or the last drought
erases
the last human
from this planet.

They are helpless.
I do not practice conservation.
They will pay attention and live in harmony with me
or they will be erased from the equation of life.

They seem to have made their choice.
May the end come quickly.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017




This is a poem for Laura Shovan's Annual February Writing Project. The words/phrases for this poem

truth

nature

earthquake

fake

disaster

conservation

wrath

helpless

propaganda

drought

originated here.

Found Object Poem Project -- Double Tomato

photo by Matt Forrest Esenwine

Double Tomato

We budded together and together we bloomed;

it just seemed natural that together we grew.

Together we look...unusual,

but together we're unified -- one outranks two!

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

Found Object Poem Project -- Fan

photo by Charles Waters

Lament of the Portable Fan

I'll never spin a hurricane,

I'll never turn a weather vane.

I'll never push a sailboat's sail

or ruffle feathers on a tail,

power windmills, shape the land,

carry ash or desert sand.

The most that I will ever be

is one small oscillating breeze.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

Our Wonderful World: The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa

The details of my Poetry Month project can be found here.

4. Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa

Tripadvisor.com

We All Wait

What's a forgotten catacomb to do?

My tunnels sprawled,

my columns endured,

my stairways persevered.

What's a forgotten catacomb to do?

I cradled the bones of the dead

in silence.

My statues stood guard

in secrecy.

And I waited.

We all wait.

Sometimes

we even know why,

or what for.

Never

in all my centuries

would I have imagined

what would break the monotony 

and end my waiting.

What's a forgotten catacomb to do?

A thousand years I waited.

Then a donkey fell through my roof

and the silence, the secrecy, and the waiting were over.

Who would have guessed?

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014


This is the first wonder I knew absolutely nothing about. Based on my experience yesterday, I knew we would need to do a bit of research before we started writing. I showed my students the image above and we brainstormed the questions we hoped to have answered by our research:

What are catacombs?
Are there traps?
Can tourists go there?
Are there kings, or treasure?
Where are they?
How old are they?
How big are they?
What are they used for?

My reading minilesson plans called for us to think about how we can determine the speaker in a poem (or a text), and in writing, we would try to write from an interesting point of view.

Turns out this was the perfect wonder for personification. You could write from the point of view of the catacombs themselves (as I did) or from the point of view of the donkey that fell through the roof in 1900, leading to the rediscovery of the catacombs. You could be a serpent guarding the doorway, a statue, a dead person buried there, or one of the shards for which the catacombs are named: "Mound of Shards." You could be the desert around it, the sky above it, or the water that's flooded the lowest level.


Carol has a Colosseum poem from yesterday at her blog, Carol's Corner.

Kevin's poem today is multimedia.

West on I-70

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Chedder

WEST ON I-70

The horizon circles me

like a coyote

warily

watchfully

remotely

The road shoots me

like an arrow

impassively

relentlessly

directly

Pikes Peak greets me

with a nod

discreetly

solemnly

distantly

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012