My Tree, My Beautiful Tree

The Oak is called the king of trees,

The Aspen quivers in the breeze,

The Poplar grows up straight and tall,

The Peach tree spreads along the wall,

The Sycamore gives pleasant shade,

The Willow droops in watery glade,

The Fir tree useful timber gives,

The Beech amid the forest lives.

-- Sara Coleridge, from Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children, 1834

Today, Poetry on Parade celebrates Arbor Day, from the Latin word arbor, meaning tree. Arbor Day encourages friends, families, and community groups to learn about trees, to plant trees, and to care for trees. The special day originated in Nebraska in 1872; on that first Arbor Day, participants planted approximately one million trees! Today, countries around the world observe the holiday. The date varies by region, depending upon planting season and climate conditions.  We might say that the idea has taken root! 

Tree

Out of the earth

Springs a trunk.

Out of the trunk

Springs a branch.

Out of the branch

Springs a stem.

Out of the stem

Springs a leaf.

Inside the leaf

Are rivers

And oceans

Of life.

-- Douglas Florian

Birch Trees

The night is white,

   The moon is high,

The birch trees lean

   Against the sky.

The cruel winds

   Have blown away

Each little leaf

   Of silver gray.

O lonely trees

   As white as wool...

That moonlight makes

   So beautiful.

-- John Richard Moreland

Our next Arbor Day selection--really one poem in two beautiful languages-- is from The Tree is Older Than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems and Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists by Naomi Shihab:

Lemon Tree

If you climb a lemon tree

feel the bark

under your knees and feet,

smell the white flowers,

rub the leaves

in your hands.

Remember,

the tree is older than you are

and you might find stories

in its branches.

-- Jennifer Clement

Árbol de Limón 

Si te subes a un árbol de limón

siente la corteza

con tus rodillas y pies,

huele sus flores blancas,

talla las hojas

entre tus manos.

Recuerda,

el árbol es mayor que tú

y tal ves encuentres cuentos

entre sus ramas.

-- Jennifer Clement
     translated by Consuelo de Aetenlund

No matter the time, the place, the language... trees help clean the air we breathe; they provide food, fuel, medicines, and shelter.  And they offer the perfect place to rest, to dream, to read a poem:

Tree Climbing

This is my tree,
my place to be alone in,
my branches for climbing,
my green leaves for hiding in,
my sunshine for reading,
my clouds for dreaming,
my sky for singing,
my tree, my beautiful tree. 

-- Kathleen Fraser

A Great Day for Poetry

In 1996, the Academy of American Poets declared April National Poetry Month-- a thirty-day opportunity each year for schools, libraries, and Poetry Paraders everywhere to celebrate poetry and its place in our lives.  It's all about beautiful words, creative thought... and getting together to share poetry on the Great Poetry Reading Day! Today, Poetry on Parade selects two poems that are great for reading, great for sharing, and great for inviting us to look at the world in a different way: 

Doors 

Some doors

are always open     Some

doors hold themselves

shut

The open doors say

"Come on in" and

"I missed you"

and

"Have a sandwich"

The closed doors

just shake their heads

I know a door

that collects things

collects

leaves     scratches

chipped paint

parts of words

It is an old door

getting gray and crabby

The other day

it said "SLAM!"     and collected

my fingers 

-- Barbara Esbensen 

Lost Poems 

I wrote a bunch of poems,

stapled them together,

took them to a friend's house.

But they somehow slipped

through the floor boards

and disappeared.

I never got those poems back.

I tried to rewrite them

but they weren't the same.

One night two months later,

sleeping over my friend's house,

we heard restless sounds,

strange little noises

that my friend insisted

were nothing but squirrels or mice.

But I pictured my lost poems

scurrying on little feet

between the floors. 

-- Ralph Fletcher

Poetry on Parade also joins Lafayette School's celebration of Staff Appreciation Week with a poem about a class who is trying very hard to appreciate a new teacher: 

No Smirchling Allowed 

A brand new teacher came today

     from one of the other schools.

"Be serious," she ordered us,

     "and listen to my rules.

"There won't be any splurching,

     and you're not allowed to flitz.

Anybody caught klumpeting

     will put me in a snitz.

"No floozering at recess.

     Grufflinking's not permitted.

And anyone who splubs outside

     will not be readmitted.

"When you put your hand up,

     I don't want to hear a bloud.

And let's be clear that while

     I'm here, no sneeping is allowed."

I was truly baffled, but I didn't

     want to show it.

What if I was flitchering and

     didn't even know it?

We sat as still as statues.

     None of us made a peep.

All of us were terrified

     we'd accidentally sneep.

We didn't have a clue about

     the rules that she was using.

How can anyone be good

     when being good is so confusing? 

-- Loris Lesynski

Some of those rules are hard to follow-- and difficult to pronounce-- on Great Poetry Reading Day.  Good Luck, Poetry Paraders!

Take Us out to the Ball Game

Bottom of the Ninth Haiku

The bases loaded--

two outs and three runs behind;

no one to pinch-hit.

--R. Gerry Fabian

On April 27, 1947, a large crowd of cheering fans welcomed Babe Ruth-- retired from baseball and struggling with poor heath-- back to the field at old Yankee Stadium. Today, Poetry on Parade celebrates Babe Ruth Day, remembering The Bambino and his return to The House that Ruth Built on that long-ago spring day. George Herman Ruth, Jr. began his professional baseball career in 1914 as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox. During the 1919-1920 off-season, he was infamously traded to the Yankees; Ruth moved to the New York outfield and became one of baseball's most powerful sluggers and prolific hitters. Our first poem was written by a baseball fan-- a sportswriter who served as commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1951 to 1965: 

Along Came Ruth 

You step up to the platter

And you gaze with flaming hate

At the poor benighted pitcher

As you dig in at the plate.

You watch him cut his fast ball loose,

Then swing your trusty bat

And you park one in the bleachers-- 

Nothing's simpler than that! 

-- Ford Frick

After trading Ruth to the Yankees, the Red Sox suffered an 86-year World Series drought-- from 1918 to 2004. We can learn more about why superstitious fans believed that Boston would never win another baseball championship in The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino by Dan Shaughnessy (796.357 SHA in the LMC).  Our next poem celebrates the New York Yankees-- and the excitement and anticipation each new season brings:

 The Yankees 

The Yankees are in spring training

down in Florida.

I can feel them every day

cracking their bats on anvils

with each warmer sunrise.

The Yankees pound quarters

out of the moon.

The Yankees

knock birds out of trees

by the millions.

I can listen to them

chewing up the college squads

and minor leaguers

like wolves on a deer.

It is a thing to hear.

The snow

listens so hard it vanishes.

The pastures

clear themselves of everything

but wind.

The ponds collapse,

the ground moves.

The Yankees 

are heading north. 

-- Robert Lord Keyes

The Yankees captured seven league championships and won four World Series titles while The Sultan of Swat wore Yankee pinstripes.  It's the stuff of legend... and poetry! 

When Babe Ruth Hit His Last Home Run 

When Babe Ruth

Hit his last home run,

It was as if the sun

Had set

Upon some huge continent

Called baseball.

After all,

Nothing Ruth did

Was small.

60 home runs

in '27.

No one had ever done

That before.

And still, after so many years,

Deep

In our sleep,

We want to be like him.

Run bases like him,

Be in the movies 

Like him,

Be larger than life

Like him.

O, Babe, come back

Hit one more

Homer

For one of your earth's children. 

-- Louis Phillips

Poetry Paraders and baseball fans may want to check out Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 by Ernest Lawrence Thayer.  Slide into the LMC and find it at 811.52 THA.  It's a guaranteed hit!  

Let's Play Guitar Hero

April is International Guitar Month, and that means scads of strumming, plenty of picking, and tons of twanging in our poetry! For thousands of years, musicians have plucked and played guitar-like instruments, filling the air with vibrating, resonating sound from India and Central Asia, through Europe, and across the ocean to the Americas. 

There are two primary types of guitars: acoustic and electric. Most often, acoustic guitars are constructed from hollowed wood or sturdy plastic and are strung with six strings made from animal gut, nylon, or steel. Electric guitars, first introduced in the 1930s, feature solid bodies and electronic amplifiers to create their distinctive tone. 

Our International Guitar Day poem makes good use of personification, a writing technique that gives human qualities to something that isn't living-- an inanimate object like a guitar, for example.  Clever Poetry Paraders will notice double meaning in the fourth verse: fretting can mean anxious and worried-- or how we place our fingers on the neck of the guitar: 

The Guitar 

The guitar is just as comfortable

In blue jeans or in tails.

He's equally at home with jazzy riffs

Or bluesy wails.

His home can be the coffeehouse,

The front porch, or the bar,

The opera or the classroom

Or the hood of Daddy's car.

Amplified, he rocks the house.

Unplugged, he can be dreamy,

As soothing as a lullaby,

Or sultry, hot, and steamy.

Whether he's strummed or picked or plucked,

That won't make him start fretting.

He's just as excited if he gets invited

To a festival, concert, or wedding.

-- Brian P. Cleary

Guitars are versatile instruments: they play blues and bluegrass: they rock, they jazz, they pop!  They add twang to country music, soul to soul music, and a bit of flame to flamenco. We conclude our Guitar Day celebration with very groovy Muppet Floyd Pepper performing The Beatles' hit While My Guitar Gently Weeps:

 

Mr. Watson... Come Here... I Want to See You!

In the 1870s, two talented and competitive inventors, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, dreamed of creating a device that could transmit speech electrically. Both men toiled in their laboratories, racing to perfect telephone designs. It truly was a race to the wire: Gray and Bell hurried their exciting inventions to the patent office within hours of each other on the same day! Ultimately, Bell received the first telephone patent on March 7, 1876, and the rest is communications history. Our first National Telephone Day poem, written by twentieth-century Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, celebrates America's promise of equality for all people:

We're All in the Telephone Book

We’re all in the telephone book,

Folks from everywhere on earth–

Anderson to Zabowski,

It’s a record of America’s worth.

We’re all in the telephone book.

There’s no priority–

A millionaire like Rockefeller

Is likely to be behind me.

For generations men have dreamed

Of nations united as one.

Just look in your telephone book

To see where that dream’s begun.

When Washington crossed the Delaware

And the pillars of tyranny shook,

He started the list of democracy

That’s America’s telephone book.

-- Langston Hughes

Mr. Watson... come here... I want to see you! When Alexander Graham Bell tested his telephone and successfully called his assistant in an adjoining room, he could only imagine how the invention would change the way the world communicates. It's also safe to say that he probably never imagined Eletelephony! Our next poem uses silly word play and ridiculous rhyme to create some tongue twisty Telephone Day fun:

Once there was an elephant,

Who tried to use the telephant-

No! No! I mean an elephone

Who tried to use the telephone-

(Dear me! I am not certain quite

That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was, he got his trunk

Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,

The louder buzzed the telephee-

(I fear I'd better drop the song

Of elephop and telephong!

--Laura Elizabeth Richards

Let's celebrate National Telephone Day by building and testing a Tin Can Telephone. And hold the phone, Poetry Paraders! That's an idiom meaning wait a minute, don't rush into something. There's still time to dial up more National Telephone Day poems in the LMC... press 811 on your Dewey Decimal keypad.

Our Big Blue Marble

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour....

-- William Blake

In the early nineteenth century, English artist and poet William Blake understood the importance of preserving, protecting, and caring for the natural world around us.  On April 22, 1970, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson acted in the same spirit, organizing a one-day national event intended to encourage appreciation of our planet and to increase awareness of Earth's environmental issues. By 1990, Earth Day had gone global, growing into an international celebration that included over 140 countries around the world, and in 2009, the United Nations officially declared April 22 International Mother Earth Day.  When we celebrate Earth Day tomorrow, we will join an Earth Day Network of more than 175 participating nations. As we prepare for Earth Day, let's declare that we are Poetry Paraders, not Plooters! 

We Are Plooters

We are Plooters,

We don't care,

We make messes

Everywhere,

We strip forests

Bare of trees,

We dump garbage

In the seas.

We are Plooters,

We enjoy

Finding beauty

To destroy,

We intrude

Where creatures thrive,

Soon there's little

Left alive.

Underwater,

Underground,

Nothing's safe

When we're around,

We spew poisons

In the air,

We are Plooters,

We don't care.

-- Jack Prelutsky 

Our next Earth Day poem, from R is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet, is an ubi sunt, taken from the Latin phrase meaning, "Where are...?"  An ubi sunt poem usually asks a series of thought-provoking questions, challenging us look at things in new ways and inspiring us to take action.

Extinction

Where did all the great auks go,

And dodos and lava mice, too?

What happened to Tasmanian tigers?

I haven't seen them, have you?

Where did the passenger pigeons go,

That once populated the sky?

And where went the Yunnan box turtle?

Why did these creatures all die?

Will someday we ask where the whale is?

Will we wonder where rhinos once ran?

Will there be whooping cranes and bald eagles?

The answer depends upon man.

-- Judy Young

Will We Ever See?

Will we ever see a tiger again,

stalking its prey with shining eyes?

Will we see the giant orangutan

inspecting its mate for fleas?

Or a California condor

feeding on the side of a hill?

Or a whooping crane

walking softly through a salty marsh?

Or hear the last of the blue whales

singing its sad song under the deep water?

-- Georgia Heard

Some communities extend Earth Day into Earth Week, planning seven days of environmental education and earth-friendly activities. But why stop at one day... or even one week? Let's make Every Day Earth Day.

Prayer for Earth

Last night

an owl

called from the hill.

Coyotes howled.

A deer stood still

nibbling at bushes far away.

The moon shone silver.

Let this stay.

Today

two noisy crows

flew by,

their shadows pasted to the sky.

The sun broke out

through clouds of gray.

An iris opened.

Let this stay.

-- Myra Cohn Livingston