WITS, CPITS, and Ode to the Color Black

I was searching the web for poems to use as examples tomorrow while teaching my Regnart GATE students about odes. I found this great site, called WITS: Writers in the Schools. I love the site, so clean and easy to see all the poems, and great art and photos as well. I'm so happy I found this. There are also some great ode poems about things like turtles and the color black. I'm grateful to these teachers and to their students. I can't tell if they are a national organization, or Texas?? I also really like how the post photos from flickr and document that on the site. Wow, I just am in love with them today.

Here is my favorite poem from their site:

Ode to the Color Black

In darkness,
beauty ebony
rises,
envelops all. Cold,
warm nothing.
Infinite pools
holding
infinite thoughts, deep
and hidden. Blackness
is the only one
with the power to
hold memories, to
induce forgetfulness.

Every person
has
two caches of
blackness. They are
your eyes. You see
with black
holes, pools, wells
of meaning,
meaninglessness.
Black means
print on paper,
pupils,
emptiness,
nothing. But black
has turned bitter. The world
believes black
is a
horrible color.
Black hearts
are full of cruelty.
Black cats
bring bad luck.
But black
is beautiful. Black
is eternal.

by Maya, 7th grade

[painting by Mark Rothko]

(c) Writers in the Schools 2007-2010.