Poetry Friday is hosted by the Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
Our classroom library is a busy place, a messy place. Books are checked out, book talked, and sometimes put back where they “belong”… and most often, not. Keeping our library somewhat organized is a somewhat impossible task. But that is a good thing, I think, because it means that it is used…and its use leads to moments like this:
when Brooke was so deeply lost in her book, that she didn’t hear the bell ring and (truth to tell) couldn’t care less. Her classmates took their seats, and then rose for the Pledge…but Brooke was far away in Maine, with Reena and Zora and grumpy old Mrs. Falala.
I think I love this part of teaching best – finding great books for kids, and then watching as they lose themselves in stories.
For My Son, Reading Harry Potter
How lovely, to be lost
as you are now
in someone else’s thoughts
an imagined world
of witchcraft, wizardry and clans
that takes you in so utterly
all the ceaseless background noise
of life’s insistent pull and drag soon fades
and you are left, a young boy
captured in attention’s undivided daze,
as I was once
when books defined a world
no trouble could yet penetrate
or others spoil, or regret stain,
when, between covers, under covers,
all is safe and sure
and each Odysseus makes it home again
and every transformation is to bird or bush
or to a star atwinkle in some firmament of light,
or to a club that lets you, and all others, in.
Oh, how I wish for you
that life may let you turn and turn
these pages, in whose spell
time is frozen, as is pain and fright and loss
before you’re destined to be lost again
in that disordered and distressing book
your life will write for you and cannot change.
Beautiful! Makes me want to go read…
I don’t know this poem, but it is just a perfect fit for those kids who get so lost in the stories of others. Love the picture, too.
Wonderful new-to-me poem. Thanks for sharing. And that student lost in Moo? So fun!
I have been this lost-in-pages kid so many times! And I am talking about MOO on my blog today! Yay!
Such good books to get lost in. I’ve always loved getting lost. The house could fall down around my eldest, and he wouldn’t look up either.
Ah, the beauty of being lost in a book! Thanks for sharing that moment with me, Tara.
Sometimes, when I’m having a particularly stressful day, I still take comfort in knowing that I can slip into the pages of a book when I get home, and let the rest of the world drift away!
What a beautiful poem for your son, Tara. I especially love these lines:
“Oh, how I wish for you
that life may let you turn and turn
these pages, in whose spell
time is frozen,”
“Oh, how I wish for you
that life may let you turn and turn
these pages, in whose spell
time is frozen, as is pain and fright and loss
before you’re destined to be lost again
in that disordered and distressing book
your life will write for you and cannot change.”
LOVE the poem (you always share the best ones, Tara)!
Love, love, love this poem and that picture of Brooke. I “lose” my daughter to HP periodically. =)
Perfect….just perfect! This poem is so bitter-sweet for me. I have sons ages 13 & 14 and I love finding them caught up in reading wishing I could freeze time a little and yet enjoying their growing up. Love this poem for today’s Poetry Friday. Thank you!
Oh that lost-in-the-pages feeling–that pretty much sums up my childhood! Thanks for sharing this.