Winter

Snow Signs

They say it is waiting for more, the snow
  Shrunk up to the shadow-line of walls
In an arctic smouldering, an unclean salt,
  And will not go until the frost returns
Sharpening the stars, and the fresh snow falls
  Piling its drifts in scallops, furls. I say
Snow has left its own white geometry
  To measure out for the eye the way
The land may lie where a too cursory reading
  Discovers only dip and incline leading
To incline, dip, and misses the fortuitous
  Full variety a hillside spreads for us:
It is written here in sign and exclamation,
  Touched-in contour and chalk-followed fold,
Lines and circles finding their completion
  In figures less certain, figures that yet take hold
On features that would stay hidden but for them:
  Walking, we waken these at every turn,
Waken ourselves, so that our walking seems
  To rouse some massive sleeper out of winter dream
Whose stretching startles the whole land of life,
  As if it were us the cold, keen signs were seeking
To pleasure and remeasure, repossess
  With a sense in the gathered coldness of heat and height.
Well, if it's for more the sow is waiting
  To claim back into disguisal overnight,
As though it were promising a protection
  From all it has transfigured, scored and bared,
Now we shall know the force of what resurrection
Outwaits the simplification of the snow.

by: Charles Tomlinson

Learning

Like Lilly Like Wilson Like

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly Wilson, the recovering like addict, the worst
I've ever seen.
So, like, bad te whole eighth grade started
calling her Like Lilly Like Wilson Like.
Until I declared my classrom a Like-Free Zone,
and should could not speak for days.

But when she finally did, it was to say,
Mr. Mali, this is ... so hard.
Now I have to thing before I... say anything.

Imagine that, Lilly.

It's for your own good.
Even if you don't like...it.

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly is writing a reasearch paper for me about how
homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to adopt
children.
I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Like Lilly Like Wilson Like at my office
door.

She's having trouble finding sources, which is to
say, ones that back her up.
They all argue in favor of what I thought I was
against.

And it took four years of college, three years of
graduate school, and every incidental
teaching experience I have ever had to let out
only,

Well, that's a really interesting problem, Lilly. But
what do you propose to do about it? That's
what I want to know.

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali, but I think
I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe
it, but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have
one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes, that it
doesn't matter what you pack them with so
long as they open at the right time.
O, Lilly, I want to say you make me feel like a
teacher, and who could ask for more than
that?
I want to say all this but manage only, Lilly, I am
like so impress with you!

So I finally taught somebody something, namely,
how to change her mind.
And learned in the process that if I ever change
the world it's going to be one eighth grader at
a time.

by: Taylor Mali

To Those Who Care ...

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive “its” (no apostrophe) with the contractive “it’s” (with apostrophe) is the unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets of a simple Pavlovian “kill” response in the average stickler.

Lynne Truss
Eats, Shoots & Leaves