News, as promised regarding the cancelled poetry reading at the Kootenay Gallery April 15th. We are going to be taking it online. Not live, but watchable any old time! Links when I get them.
The instructions, from NaPoWriMo for today's poem are to "write a poem about a specific place — a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances (“three and a half blocks from the post office”), the types of trees or flowers, the color of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood – and can take your poem to weird and wild places."
It's 11:41 PM... Chances of finding a photo of that school right now are between slim and nil. Instead, here's a picture of me from that time. How do I happen to have such a picture handy at 11:41 PM? It was part of my mom's collection of photos that my sisters and I dispersed after she moved to a nursing home a year ago. I haven't seen her since early January as we were away for nine weeks and now we're in isolation and her home is closed to visitors, of course. Hopefully next week I can see her through glass.
Two-Room Schoolhouse, Willow Point
First day of school
I broke away from my mother
ran up the stairs
so many stairs
at least a dozen
easy to trip on
rise was steep
to greet the teacher
who was also a neighbour
hung my sweater on a hook
in the shadow-worn cloakroom,
was shown the toilet
girls’ on the left of the teacher’s office
warned never to go there
without raising my hand
one finger for number one
two for number two
was shown my desk
warned to keep it tidy
At recess we went outside
to play games like tag,
to play games like tag,
Home Free was the space
I could wedge into
between two trunks of a birch
in the front yard
after we chased each other
through the trails in the back
past the rock with a dip that perfectly fit
a grade-schooler’s behind.
A child’s dream, mostly,
so many places to hide
from ourselves or each other.
3 comments:
Wonderful yellow building with lots of multi-paned windows...I used to walk by it on my way to and from the Duhamel Creek Grocery store when I lived at 5 1/2 mile on the North Shore. It closed the year I moved to the Kootenays to attend DTUC I think and I thought it was sad to close such a perfect elementary school with all that play space. What a treat it is to now read a perfect poem about that very school and all that school yard! Thank you!
What a perfect poem about that welcoming yellow building with all its many-paned windows and the huge yard for kids to play in. Sad day when it closed I thought. Thank you!
Fun remembrance. Mine was about a school too.
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