Poetry Friday: An Assignment

Hidden

There it was in a tree;

As we passed by, we could see!

A shape, not natural like bark or leaf or beak.

Still, it chose us for whom to speak.

What treasure will be found inside?

Maybe none, but instead, garbage stuck in a place to hide.

There it was in a tree!

The background on this poem is two-fold. I’ve been trying to exercise more. I like to walk and wrote about this recently. This week I walked twice with friends. The second walk was through a neighborhood new to me that wound down a country road and then back to the neighborhood by following a nature trail in our town. It is a lovely trail and the same one my husband walks each morning with our dog. On this walk yesterday, my friend spotted this container stuck in a decaying tree trunk. We are both familiar with geocaching, but neither of us had ever spotted this cache before. This find prompted my poem.

In addition, I started taking a course to become a certified PLT teacher. PLT stands for Project Learning Tree. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, just because the curriculum is so well known. However, the providers of the curriculum prefer educators be trained in how to use it. I have the time to take the three week course, and it was a free offering from Texas A & M Forestry. The class started Monday night. Our homework for the week was to get outside and write some poems (guidance was provided if one was unfamiliar with poetry) and make a nature journal. I can imagine that while this is completely within my comfort zone, it might not be for others. Still, I’ll be writing more poetry later today to fulfill my homework assignment.

For my nature journal, I chose to recycle or repurpose a file folder. Over the years, I’ve used file folders for many projects involving the recording of nature observations. Many companies and schools get rid of file folders when they can easily be repurposed for projects such as a nature journal. I also happened to have many stamp pads at my disposal (I am a mom and a teacher), so I put those to use, as well. Yellow is my favorite color and the “fall-ish” stamps I picked to use showed up well on the bright background. It was a fun and simple project that did not cost me a cent! I thought I’d pass it on in case anyone would like to give it a try.

My first entries will include the poem above, as well as these two Haiku:

Hidden Geocache

Follow numbers or just look

Where will I find you?

Majestic Oak Tree

Branches, like limbs, face the sun

Forest Magistrate

At first I was not thrilled with this assignment, as it is something I have done with students many times. However, as I made my journal and wrote today, I realized we can all grow even though we’ve done something before.

Today is Poetry Friday!Today’s gracious host is Linda B. from Teacher Dance. Thank you, Linda, for hosting today’s gathering of poets and allowing us to share our work!