Hitting Two Birds with One Stone #SOL

It's been a while.  Summer is here, and I am slowly finding my way back to my joys.  I have two writing goals on my list for this summer, writing Slices of Life and poetry.  Today, I am bringing them together.  

Last night, I was honored to be a part of a poetry writing session with Kate Moore, author of Alphapoetica, hosted by the Teach Write Academy.  She took me on a journey through my childhood, and I found so much joy in writing poetry last night.  It had been a while since I got lost in my writing.  

First, we picked an item from Kate's bag of artifacts.  One caught my eye, and it lead me to a memory from elementary school. I wrote two haiku poems.

Mica Mining

On hands and knees, I 
searched for sparkles and then
picked paper-thin sheets

off of rocks scattered
on the ground, mica,
treasures of my youth.

After writing three different poems, she had us do a quilt poem.  This poem required us to pull lines from our three poems to create a new poem.  This one became more of a list poem as I recognized that all of my poems had to do with different times in my life.

Treasures of my youth
a tower of books,
picked paper-thin sheets,
the first and only spirit next to me,
mucking in the ponds
for polliwogs and salamanders.
I crossed the threshold 
to that space
that held many familiar
memories.

It was a wonderful night of poetry with a trip through time for me, and tonight, I can share it as a joyful slice of my life.