Poetry Friday: Tiny Roads Inside the Cabbage

I have this book, titled above. I'm not even sure where I got it -- a teacher's conference I suppose. It was published by New Hampshire poets Marie Harris and Deb Alberts; made possible by a grant from the NH Commission on the Arts and National Endowment.

The book celebrates ten years of poets working in the schools, and highlights some of the poems written by students from 1972-1982.

Here are a couple I love from Marie Harris's students:

Great Grandad

He was a strong man,
sitting up in his chair,
his calloused hands
running through his thin gray hair.
He was a funny man
always with a hat upon his head.
When he pinched Great Grandma
her gentle face turned red.
He would reach down to his shoe
and pretend he was tying a knot,
then when she wasn't looking
he would take a shot.
He told us never to tell
about his little bottle.

              -- Mike Evenson, Grade 9, Spaulding Jr. High, Rochester (NH)


Shy Soup

What to put in?
Let's try the loneliness of the corner
The pain of downcast eyes
The lone gloom that hangs above
The damp chill of the closed door
Maybe the soreness of quick moving feet
The rapid heartbeat
Or the yellow mist that drowns the soul

We will cook it on the smallest match
A broken spiderweb
A drop of dew.
With luck it will taste like a cleraed throat
or the loss of breath.

We'll stir it with the thinnest icicle
and it eat with a butterfly's wing.
Lastly, it will look like a piece of silk,
alone in a field of cashmere.

                     -- Carrie Steadman, grade 8, Spaulding Jr. High, Rochester

Carol his hosting Poetry Friday over at her corner. Check it out!