Here's the poem Isabella and
Chloe created:
Leap of courage
Friendship changes life
into a fulfilling treasure
because seeking community
supports peace.
Lydia, Lukas' sister, wrote a
clever rhyming poem. You can
tell she had a lot of fun talking to
the yellow rock.
What You Are
Are you a petrified lemon?
Oh wait, that's not it!
You're more like a hard candy
That refuses to be bit.
Are you a snake's eye?
No, that just cannot be.
Maybe you're a gem
Passed down through history.
You remind me of cream soda
That fizzes and foams
And of a steep cliffside
On which a bird roams.
In the end it doesn't matter
Why you're here, what you are.
The joy that you bring
To me is so bizarre.
In Chloe's poem "Scarcity," she uses a musical device called
alliteration to create some musical sounds. Alliteration is
the repetition of consonant sounds in the words. Can you
identify some of the beginning sounds that are alike?
Scarcity
What were you like, little blue shard
before you shattered?
A carefully crafted masterpiece,
created on shore
Ending by some misfortune in the
murky, rocky depths
Once a beautiful, miraculous whole,
now a glimpse of minuscule blue triangle
precious in its scarcity
How brave you've been,
to travel alone,
so far,
so tragically,
To find your way to me.
Besides inspiring the kids to write imaginatively, the workshop led to other
good things. Ava said, "I love how the class not only taught about how
poetry makes you feel, but how it also makes you use your other senses
too!" Lukas said, "It was a fun workshop, and I've been writing a lot more
poetry because of it." And Lydia thought the workshop "was really inspiring
and made me look at poetry in a different way."
Suzanne is available to come to your school or group and do a poetry
workshop. Contact her at s.underwood.rhodes@gmail.com.
Here is 12-year-old Lukas J.'s,
inspired by a piece of frosty sea glass:
What were you used for, blurred
little jug?
With your smoothed rim and
jagged body,
What happened to you on your
voyage?
You might have been used for water
Or milk, or was it something else
altogether?
What have you seen, faded piece of
a jug?
Was it starfish or goldfish, shark or
whale?
Was it a plain rock that broke you?
Your journey among the splashing
waves has ceased
and a new life
has begun.
Of f icialKidsMag.com • MAY 2020 • 33
