Blog-iversary

February marks my one year blog-iversary. Last year at this time I took the desperate measure of finding something fulfilling to do; the stretch between winter vacation and spring vacation is incredibly difficult for teachers-- students' bad behaviors amp up, the days are long and dreary, and it's hard to find opportunities for rest and rejuvenation. I was downtrodden. My early entries were time consuming pieces of writing that allowed me to stretch out in reflection, to re-enter places I hadn't visited in a while. I'm thankful for this space that is free of criticism and open to my writing whims.

During this last month, in thinking about various posts and not having the time/energy to complete the ones I started ("oh yeah, this time of year is really hard!" -- it took me seven years of teaching to notice the pattern), two recurring questions gelled.

Why do I write so much about the music of my youth?

Why don't I write more about teens?

Obviousness was tapping me on the forehead with her index finger. Writing about the music of my youth is my way of writing about what I do every day. Teens slip into my writing in moments when they seem least present because those little buggers have my heart. Journal poems about my garden become poems about my students

In the summer, the vines twist around each other like ecstatic children

They reach away from the wire fence and find each other in open gravity

Unfurling leaves taste the air like reptile tongues

and then poems that reflect the worries I harbor; I only have a year and a half longer to get them ready for high school!

Not all these green hearts will make it,

Some will harden through,

retreat from root and life,

crack from the vine.

I don't know what this year will bring, but I hope it will be full of more blog entries because the good it has done my soul to spend time writing is incalculable.

I lift an LP in honor of this occasion, my blog-iversary. Thank you, dear friend, for reading.