As summer winds down, thoughts turn to the start of school. Each new year brings new faces new challenges, new curriculum, but poetry remains a constant. Krista Tippet’s interview with Naomi Shihab Nye on last week’s episode of On Being (a must-listen!) prompted me to revisit “Valentine for Ernest Mann” and think about where poems are hiding in my life.
Here is a draft of one I found outside my kitchen window one morning this week:
Poems hide.
They lie crouched in the tall grass
at the edge of a thicket
where each morning
a tawny rabbit emerges
to nibble his breakfast
of grass and sweet clover.
His ears stand at attention,
alert for the slightest sound,
eyes peeled
for the shadow of a hawk,
legs coiled in readiness
to flee back into
the safety of the thorns.
© Catherine Flynn, 2016
![By M2545 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://readingtothecore.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/rabbit_north_america.jpg?w=368&h=196)
I’m looking forward to returning to school and learning where poems are hiding in the lives of my students.
Please be sure to visit Tara Smith at A Teaching Life for the Poetry Friday Roundup.
Reading to the Core 
I can send you a few pics of those bunnies, Catherine. They do not seem afraid anymore, but do freeze, think they’re hiding, I guess. I love “Ernest Mann” & how you’ve taken it and found your own poem, those rabbits, “coiled to flee”. They do seem vulnerable, but escape often!
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I love this, Catherine. You’ve got me thinking about the “safety of thorns” and the various thorns in my own life that I rely upon to “protect me” from taking risks.
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I loved listening to that interview and wish to listen again and maybe even share with my students. I am collecting poems to share with them as mentor texts. Yours and Naomi’s will be there along with Mary Lee’s and Laura Foley’s from Mary Lee’s post today. Thanks for helping me plan a year of poetry. I’ll see my students next week.
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Fun exercise! Like Michelle, I was snagged by those thorns. Love your skittish bunny-poems, Catherine.
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I love that poems are anywhere we look!
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I’m sure you’ll find those hidden poems crouching at the edge of your students’ young minds! Wishing you a wonderful start to the school year.
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So beautiful, Catherine. I love thinking about all the poems hiding in my life around me. Hope you have a great start to your school year!
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Catherine, thank you for sharing Naomi’s interview. It was certainly illuminating and gave me much to ponder. The poem you created is so engaging as it starts with poems hide. Oftentimes, they are hidden deep inside, just waiting for the right moment to hop out.
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Gorgeous, Catherine. I was snagged by those unexpected thorns, too! Thanks for the heads-up on the interview; love that program and Naomi Shihab Nye, but I missed that program! I’m certain you and your lucky students will find poems in all kinds of surprising places this year. :0)
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lovely. Just lovely.
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You make me want to write a poem every morning of the day, this week…
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