Tight End Poet Number 37

Here’s what I know about football: Someone shouts out a number, another guy hikes the ball, and then everyone either makes a break for it or they fall in a pile. They get four chances to score and then they have to turn over the ball and let the other team have a

KSRA Poetry Around

As Michael and I were driving to Keystone State Reading Association this week, (well, let me amend that, as Michael was driving and I was taking in the colorful hills and valleys along the PA turnpike) anyway, while we were traversing the oh so long state of PA, I tried to count how many times

Where do you find the words? Black River Schools

The question came during magic time, the final question and answer session after the assembly. Good question! Sometimes I can find the words and other times they tumble around in my head and refuse to commit themselves to paper. Other times the words seem to have sleeping sickness and are too lazy

Bountiful Harvest

Arms full of basil, red, yellow, and green peppers. Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. Lettuce and even some banana peppers. A few choice strawberries and lots of flowers. And the only fertilizer used came from worm castings. I’m not quite ready to enter the county fair, but this labor of love netted some

Anatomy of a speech

Missouri Reading Association is a warm, inviting event. Michael and I are on the docket to do the kick off keynote. Tick Tick the Clock. Teachers filing into the ballroom. And I race to make one more change. Michael (owner of the watch) says to let it go, but I know that in

Off the Books

Yesterday a big Yellow Freight delivery truck (way big) pulled up in front of the house and the nice delivery man wanted to drop off two pallets of books, (value $80,000). In fact, all I was supposed to receive were 3 text books. I’m not certain of the value of these books, but a

Spot the difference?

“Business or leisure?”The question appears on every country’s entry form, and you have to choose. One or the other. Walking through an airport it is easy to pick out the strictly leisure types, cameras around necks, Hawaiian shirts and flip flops walking through O’Hare in January. It used to be easy to spot the business

Death of a Loved One Day 115

Lists of reasons to not write are long, most of them written by people on deadline. This past week, in order to avoid doing my work (writing) I cleaned out folders on my computer and finally (this is really digging deep) the supply closet in my office. Stuck in here and there among the

The Teacher’s Life

Mrs. Henderson, my sixth grade teacher, had sensible lace up heels, salt-n-pepper hair and permanently embedded chalk in her torn and ragged cuticles. I remember studying them when I would be summoned to her confused desk for a conference. We repeatedly conferred about how messy my desk was, we didn’t do any writing to confer