Monday, March 14, 2011

Stopping Violet's Feeding on a Snowy Evening

Today was a day off for the students in my district, but not for the teachers. We attended a workshop, and its focus was poetry. It was conducted by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, an author and teacher who makes these day-long meetings not only bearable, she makes them worthwhile (She also runs a fantastic blog that I’ve mentioned before – the poem farm – and she planted the seed that led to this blog’s birth). She allowed us plenty of time to write today, and even challenged us to write some poetry. It had been a while for me (I wrote LOTS of bad poetry in college), but I had fun dusting off the poetic synapses in my brain. Not surprisingly, one of my poems was about Violet:

The bottle's nipple smells
Like something it shouldn’t.
Something about Violet’s eyes
Tells me so
Before I hold it to my nose.
Garlic? Ketchup?
The odor’s identity eludes me.
I ask Violet if she cares.
And stick the nipple back in.
She eats.
I guess the answer is no.
Another thing to wash at 4 AM
Seems like so much work.

114 days old

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