Test Day (Monday Poem)

by Kathi Appelt

 

 

It's never about the things I know:

 

    Where the old turtle hid her eggs

    How many homeruns my brother hit last season

    My mom's favorite colors -- violet and pink

    That chocolate chip cookies need vanilla

    The year my grandfather fought in a war

    The year he didn't come back

    That my great-great-great-aunt learned to drive when she was 68

    What time the moon rose last night

    And what time it set this morniing

    How the thunder scares my ginger-striped cat

    Why the neighbor's hound howls at stars

    Where the grackle built her nest

    What to put in my dad's cup of coffee . . . .

 

            It's never about the things I know.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

Creativity (Monday Poem)

by Eileen Spinelli

 

 

An artist takes:

 

colored pencil

piece of yarn

wooden slat from 

some old barn

sidewalk chalk

or spool of wire

can of paint 

or junkyard tire

twig or twine

or river rock

seed or seashell

woolen sock

bar of soap

or paper heart

and turns it

happily

to art.

 

Perhaps you have:

a shard of plate

a hinge from someone's

garden gate

a scrap of quilt

or rusty screw . . . .

 

then you can be 

an artist too.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

In My Hands (Monday Poem)

 by Marilyn Singer

 

 

I like to hold in my hand

    a baseball,

    a shell,

    a fistful of sand,

    a feather,

    a letter,

    a red rubber band.

Things that tickle,

Things that trickle.

Things to snap and toss and fold

    or just hold.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

 

 

Just Look! (Monday Poem)

by Valiska Gregory

 

 

A cardinal in red velvet,

two doves in stylish gray,

four sparrows dressed in tattered brown,

a loud-mouth bully of a jay,

 

a foxy squirrel in brown-gold fut,

a chipmunk with cheeks bulged fat,

and in the maple tree a crow

as calm as a monk in black,

 

a nuthatch skittering down the trunk,

and gossiping grackles below ---

we see their trick-track twiggy feet

write messages in snow.

 

Our gifts of thistle, millet, seed,

seem small under endless sky,

but watching them feast, our hearts are full,

as if we too might fly,

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009