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The Puppy Speaks
I guess my favorite season is summer.
I watch the mailman.
I think about pizza.
I want spaghetti.
I know how to roll over.
I feel very happy.
Guillermo Nava
***
I’m having so much fun putting this Poet’s Corner together!
I’m thrown back to puppyhood!—re-romping anthologies of children’s poems written in workshops I led through California Poets in the Schools.
The poem above, and the two students’ poems below, “WannaBe” and “When I get to be a fire hydrant,” were written in classes taught by Marilyn Blake Phillip and myself at Lo-Inyo Elementary School in Lone Pine, five years ago. My poem, last, is also from 2015.
From childhood I seemed to believe everything had a spirit.
As a poet-teacher I always, and still, can’t resist sharing that childhood “intuition” with others: kind of like tossing a little ball to energetic pups who might want to tear after it, maybe slide on belly toward it, shake it around in the mouth, scoot off to hide, and CHEW: What is that made of? What can I make of it?
***
WannaBe
I’m just a wrinkled up plastic bag
But I wanna be a fox leather designer purse.
If I was a fox leather designer purse
Then I could carry more important things like a phone
And my owner would show me off and like me.
I would go to the mall and take care of my owner’s money
And she would keep me for a really long
Time and she would be proud of me.
I would feel so happy because everyone would want me
For I would be the newest prettiest purse
I would be all over Facebook and Twitter.
But I’m only a flimsy wrinkly plastic bag
So I’ll just be happy holding small things that are important to
me.
Gracie Gutierrez
***
When I get to be a fire hydrant
I will save lives every day
I will be kind
And I won’t mind having dogs
Stop every ten seconds to take a break
And I will help firefighters.
I will be the best fire hydrant
And I will put the other hydrants to shame
And I will help everybody around me
And I will care for people
And I’ll be a good role model for people
And I will love my job
And I’ll be good at it
I will put out raging fires
And I will unite people to fight fires
And I will be loyal to my cause
And I’ll be available always
I wouldn’t care what time they call
And I’ll never move from the spot
Of glory where all hydrants
Belong
And I’ll show the world
That hydrants are the bomb.
Walker Rost
***
What the Rainbow Remembered
the smell of sweet clover
bathing my big feet
the echo of the thunder
scaring the bunnies
the clouds pushing me out—
jealous!
and the tender raindrops:
tiny children riding down me
like
a
slide
Once I put on my brightest cloak
in a meadow of tall, tall grass
hidden in a narrow, emerald valley
--too far from cities to be seen by people—
and then, once, then, only then
the leprechauns danced that glen
from dusk to dawn
and I watched in awe
until first light
when my love for the Earth
melted me away
to bloom another day I dreamed
in flowers
Eva Poole-Gilson
***