Happy Poetry Month!

For those who don’t know what the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem is, it is a yearly event conceived and hosted by poet Irene Latham. Each day, the poem travels to a different blog, and the blogger adds his or her line. You never know where the poem will end up, but it’s always a magical experience. At the end of the month, Irene polishes the poem and adds a title and — ta-da! — we have a collective poem written by thirty poets!

So here I was, watching the 2015 Progressive Poem sloshing its way toward me, when it finally landed at Doraine Bennett’s blog yesterday. I was glad to see that the Grandmother’s wise words had been deftly handled by Margaret and Kim, leaving Doraine free to move the story and our mermaid-being along to her next adventure.

And she did indeed, but … she’s left me with a paddle mid-dip. Devious poet! My first instinct was to have the paddle bump something under the water, but then I remembered it’s our mermaid under the water and I didn’t want her to get bonked in the head by a paddle.

Hm. I keep coming back to the idea that she seems completely serene in this environment, but yet she has a windswept memory. That sounds like a troubled conscience or an inner struggle, perhaps to forget something unpleasant. And her grandmother had advised her to expect the pearl and reach for the rainbow reflection. That sounds like advice to one who might be suffering the consequences of an unwise decision. Perhaps this mermaid needs to expect more of and for herself.

Maybe it’s her chance to go for the pearl. 

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium of the delta.
Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.

Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,
snows in wild wind as she digs in the indigo varnished handbag,

pulls out her grandmother’s oval cuffed bracelet,
strokes the turquoise stones, and steps through the curved doorway.

Tripping on her tail she slips hair first down the slide… splash!
She glides past glossy water hyacinth to shimmer with a school of shad,

listens to the ibises roosting in the trees of the cypress swamp–
an echo of Grandmother’s words, still fresh in her windswept memory.

Born from the oyster, expect the pearl.
Reach for the rainbow reflection on the smallest dewdrop.

And now I hand the poem over to Robyn Hood Black. I wonder where she’ll lead our mermaid next…

                                       FOLLOW ALONG!
This is where the poem has been and where it’s going still…

1 Jone at Check it Out
2 Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy
3 Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe
4 Laura at Writing the World for Kids
5 Charles at Poetry Time Blog
6 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
7 Catherine at Catherine Johnson
8 Irene at Live Your Poem
9 Mary Lee at Poetrepository
10 Michelle at Today’s Little Ditty
11 Kim at Flukeprints
12 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
13 Doraine at DoriReads
14 Renee at No Water River
15 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
16 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
17 Buffy at Buffy’s Blog
18 Sheila at Sheila Renfro
19 Linda at Teacher Dance
20 Penny at A Penny and her Jots
21 Tara at A Teaching Life
22 Pat at Writer on a Horse
23 Tamera at The Writer’s Whimsy
24 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
25 Tabatha at The Opposite of indifference
26 Brian at Walk the Walk
27 Jan at Bookseedstudio
28 Amy at The Poem Farm
29 Donna at Mainely Write
30 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme

AW, SHUCKS!
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