Sunday, February 22, 2009

A found poem

These are the words and images from some of the young women I've been teaching. I just took their lines (cleaned them up slightly) and arranged them into a poem.

If…

If I could be any color in the world
I would be green
Like the beautiful trees

In a quiet garden,

Where the birds fly above my leaves

And taste the flavor of freedom.

Green, the color of renewal,

Knowing something will be born.

I would be black

To absorb all other colors,

To absorb hatred, jealousy, bloodshed.

Black like the color of night,

To hide myself from strangers

Who want to enter my life.

I’d be the whispers

That float in the sky

To make the clouds shiver

With delight.

Or I could be yellow

Like the sunrise in the morning,

Something to give us hope,

To touch a heart full of darkness.

I would be the smell of earth

touched by rain.

The sound of that rain

When it is heard on my street,

Meaning I’ve arrived at my destination

After a long, hard journey.

I would be my father’s glasses

The ones he looks through

To see me growing day after day.

The glasses he holds carefully

And cleans with all his love.

His white t-shirt filling with color

When he says “Good morning, Beauty.”

I would be the sound of the wind

Traveling from place to place,

Seeing the world

Without anyone to stop me.

The sound of a book opening,

Giving knowledge.

Giving voice.


From Mr. Basil’s class

Written as a collaborative poem

February, 2009

With a little help from Elizabeth Thomas

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