My Grandmother

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Grass Song

Witchgrass, Switchgrass, in-the-roadside-ditch grass;
Junegrass, strewn grass, waving-on-the-dune grass;
        Everywhere I pass, grass. Everywhere I see

Bluegrass, new grass, wet-with-morning-dew grass;
Stiff grass, sniff grass, growing-on-the-cliff grass;
       Everywhere I pass, grass. Everywhere I see

Foxtail, Squirreltail, standing-brown-and-stale grass;
Barley, Timothy, tickles-on-the-knee grass;
         Everywhere I pass, grass. Everywhere I see

Sweet Grass, peat grass, soft-beneath-my-feet grass;
Clump grass, stump grass, even-in-the-dump grass;
Shy grass, high grass, almost-to-the-sky grass!
       Everywhere I pass, grass – and grasses pass me!

                                                                        EBO

How many different kinds of grasses can you find in this song? *

Many poems become songs to sing, dances to dance, or games to play. 

Can you snap, clap, jump, skip, twist or turn as you chant this poem?
Can you make up your own little dance for it? 

Once, on an author visit in Nova Scotia, I was surprised by a grade three and four class who had created a circle dance with Grass Song. The children held baskets of different kinds of grasses as they danced and chanted to the rhythm of the poem.

* (9)  Witchgrass, Switchgrass, Junegrass, Bluegrass, Foxtail, Squirreltail, Barley, Timothy, Sweet Grass. (We could also count Ticklegrass  for “tickles-on-the-knee grass” and Dunegrass for “waving-on-the-dune grass.” That would make 11!))

Wind Dance, 1999,  Scholastic Canada

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The Spittlebug

No one can see the spittlebug –

(Not that it’s such a little bug.)

    But it’s cleverly hiding

    And coolly residing

In just enough spit to fit-a-bug.

EBO

The Island

The island like a green ship waits
while waters wash its weary sides
and spray keeps soft its mossy decks;
while squirrels leap and climb the masts
and mice run ‘round its tangled ropes.

The island like a green ship waits –
    a green ship waits,
     a green ship waits.

The island like a green ship waits
while birds find bits of cargo scraps
and winds play long the ready sails
and high one sailor watches out
for who might lift the anchors up.

The island like green ship waits –
         a green ship waits,
          a green ship waits –
the island like a green ship waits.

EBO

The Snapper

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The Frog Bog

There is
no room
in the
frog bog
for a poem –
not even
a line
or
a word
or a
space
of a poem
because
the place
is taken up
with
paragraphs
of rock
and pool
and
phrases
of legs
and arms,
jumps
and bumps
of
punctuation
marks
between
cousins
and cousins,

and cousins
and frogs

and frogs
and frogs.

There is no room
in the frog bog
for a poem.

EBO

The Storm

grumbles
from
far
and far away;
moves
closer,
burdened,
bold and gray

stumbles
and cracks
his crooked cane
scattering
fast
and frightened
rain

chases
us in
until he is gone
far away
stumbling,
grumbling on.

EBO

“Chickadee Magazine”  April 1994

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Little Chipmunk

Perched in the sun, little chipmunk;
Ready for a run, little chipmunk?
Come, come, come, little chipmunk,
Come, come, come!
Your whiskers and your nose, your tail and your toes
are ready for a run,
so come, come, come!

Running here and there, little chipmunk;
Tail up in the air, little chipmunk;
Don’t be scared of a scare, little chipmunk;
Come, come, come.
See the little tracks of our watermelon snacks
we have scattered in the sun?
So come, come, come!

With furry cheeks plump, little chipmunk;
You can run and jump, little chipmunk,
Down your hole by the stump, little chipmunk,
So come, come, come.
You’ll have enough in your cheeks for many winter weeks
If you come, come, come.
Come, come, come!

Though your white stripes fly, little chipmunk;
You’re tame, not shy, little chipmunk;
So we’ll wait close by, little chipmunk
Until you come, come, come.

Come, come, come little chipmunk,
Come, come, come.
Come, come, come.

EBO

Summer Reading

I read a book this summer when we traveled to the shore.
I read it in the car till I reached page twenty-four.
I read it in the boat to the motor’s steady hum,
Until the water splashed and sprayed on page thirty-one.

I read it on the beach when we got ourselves to land.
Now page forty-seven is speckled brown with sand.
I read it with an ice cream in the hot and melting sun,
When drops of sticky chocolate fell on page fifty-one.

I read it in a hammock when a spider from the tree
Came down and crawled across the words on page sixty-three.
I read it by the fire roasting marshmallow quite late.
Now page eighty-seven sticks to page eighty-eight.

I read it in my sleeping bag (no one could see the light).
I read until I’d finished in the middle of the night.
Then I read the last page over and over one more time,
Until my head dropped down to sleep on page ninety-nine!

EBO

“Chickadee,” Summer, 1995

My Lollipop

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Making Ice Cream

Here comes
the sugar
and
the cream
and
rock salt
and
ice
and
a bit of
vanilla
and
strawberries
sliced.

Here comes
the bucket,
and
the paddle,
and
the crank
to hold
to turn
ice cream
delicious
and
ice cream
cold!

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Ribbon Seller’s Song

Ribbons, ribbons, plenty of ribbons!

Will anyone buy from me

       Ribbons of sunlight,

       Ribbons of seaweed,

Ribbons of bark from the tree?

Ribbons, ribbons, I sell ribbons.

Will anyone stop to buy

       Ribbons of rootlets,

       Ribbons of rainbows,

Ribbons of cloud from the sky?

EBO

Wind in my Pocket, 1990, Breakwater Books. 
Wind Dance, 1999, Scholastic Canada

Night Ripples

In rippling quilts
of cabin beds,
in dark of night 
we turn
our
heads
to watch
the gold
of early moon
rise
with the rippling
call of loon.

Through
window glass
and
pale screen door,
from
quilt of lake
and
pillowed shore,
the calling
high,
the shimmering
deep
ripple us
into
summer sleep.

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Writer Rain 

is telling
her stories
on the
green pages
of forest leaves
and
on the
dark sheets
of cabin roof.

She
is writing
with silver
ink 
that pours
out
all day
from
the
gray-bottled
clouds.

EBO

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We Sing of Strawberries

We sing of strawberries
for jam, cake and pie
when there’s a warm, sweet wind
and a ripening sky.

We walk to the patch
that hides in the hay
with cups and containers
for a strawberry day.

We bend in the grasses
until evening comes;
then with strawberry fingers
and strawberry thumbs,

We sing home with strawberries
for jam, cake and pie
as the strawberry sun
stains a strawberry sky.

EBO

Chickadee Magazine Summer, 1991
Gage “Cornerstones” Canadian language Arts, 1998
Wind in my Pocket,  Breakwater Books, 1990

Grandmother’s Lady’s Slippers

were
Mocassin Flowers
stepping
wild
in the dark woods,

but
when she brought them
to
the cultivated
shade
of hemlocks,

they
became
Lady’s Slippers
pale
and delicate –
waiting
in pink-veined
silence
for their
royal bees.

            EBO

My grandmother used to carefully plant and care for Pink Lady Slippers under the hemlock trees near the main cabin on the lake. How often I would hear her say to us as we ran about the trees, “Be careful of the ladyslippers!”

I don’t remember any of us grandchildren stepping on those beautiful pink ladyslippers, but I do remember something else. One day a child, whose family was visiting my grandparents, came running in from play with a bouquet of ladyslippers in her hand. She had picked each one carefully and presented them with great joy to my grandmother. My grandmother did not scold, but thanked the child, and made a centerpiece of ladyslippers for the diningroom table. That flower arrangement was beautiful especially as it spoke of the grace of my grandmother.

Pink Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium acaule) grow under the hemlocks but also in a wide variety of habitats – in both deciduous and coniferous woods, in sandy soil and in bogs and swampy areas. Almost every name for these flowers speaks of their likeness to a foot or something to wear on the foot. Its generic name, Cypripedium, means “Venus’ slipper”. An early North American name is Moccasin Flower, another Squirrel Shoes. The species name, “acaule,” means stemless. The large basal leaves of the lady’s slipper come right up from its roots “without a stem.”

Pink Lady’s Slippers are orchids. Like most orchids, they are pollinated by insects. Honeybees, bumblebees, and species of smaller bees visit Pink Lady’s Slipper flowers.

The Singing Grace

At suppertime
in summer
we sing
the 
singing grace.
The
lines leap up
in
joyful round                     
from
place
to
place
to
place.

The round goes
round
the table
and 
round
it
once                                          
again
‘til
like the day
we close our eyes          
to sing
the sweet Amen.

EBO