Oktober

Cardinal at the window feeder
Two days of steady rain
Moving the plants that can't
Handle the frost indoors

Seeing you in a half dream
Wearing a made up face
With music behind you
From the island of Crete

You are always bearing living gifts
That the people turn down
They would rather drape themselves
In the corpse flesh of culture

You with your star eyes focused
Can achieve the inconceivable
Like lifting hot heavy stones
With the wind of your breath

You are a living verb while
They are noun-things in a herd
You are slow to come and
Slow to go while they hurry hurry

This evening cold and damp
Daring you to come out
Rain keeps quitting then starting
Again while cardinal feeds un-phased.

My New Teaching Strategy

If I find myself automatically rejecting a child's way of using certain materials because it doesn't fit with my agenda for the day, then I make myself figure out a way to turn whatever the child was doing into one of tomorrow's activities.

Markings

A relic unclaimed, no name

Left on the art table today

Blob of white glue and something

Looking like the iris of an eye

Black marker scratchings, cut up

Orange paper pieces placed but not

Pasted on the red rectangular page

The remains of a free form session

With scissors and creation like

The shed skin of a snake or

Wind markings in sand dunes.