Jackson surprised me last night by telling me he had to have a poem for "Poem In Your Pocket" day today for school -- Mrs. Sharma, bless her Language Arts teacher's heart -- was requiring all the kids to pick poems, write them down, and carry them around! So, I dug out of the garage (where it is in temporary storage while we are temporarily living in this funky mint green rental house on a hillside) my box of poetry books I use when I teach. The good news, is that right away Jackson and I were able to find a poem, about wolves howling. "They howl and it seems to comfort them" or something like that. A perfect teenage boy poem. He wrote it out by hand, and by the time he was done, he almost had it by heart, a fine unintended side effect. He also sat on the couch and read from that anthology, "Talking to the Rain," for at least 30 minutes. I had to bite my lip to keep from telling him how happy I was to see him reading poems -- not a perfect teenage boy's mom thing to say.
(Check out the cool blog about books I found while looking for the wolf poem!! They have a whole list of kids books.)
In the meantime, I'm writing two poems: one about bundle boards and one about something else I can't remember right now. I'm tired. It's not as bizarre as it sounds.
