Poetry Friday: Snow Day, by Billy Collins

I love the lacy, drapey patterns the winds gave us. 

Though for us, it was more than a day; it was a snow week. We went to sleep Sunday night, wondering if we'd actually be hit with the predicted blizzard. A "revolution of snow" later (fourteen inches), we had our answer. School canceled for Atticus (for three days!) college classes canceled for Betsy, library closed for Anne-with-an-e, and Green Gables Homeschool? Shut down tight for Ramona and me. 

Like my beloved Billy Collins, we were willing prisoners in our house. The dog indeed "porpoised through the drifts" and obviously, as the sun rose on today, Poetry Friday, there was only one poem I could turn to. 

Snow Day
by Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, 
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,

(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~

The round up today is at Beyond LiteracyLink. 

Poetry Friday: I, Too by Langston Hughes

Give me your tired, your poor 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Because this is America.
Because this is who we are, or are supposed to be.
Because no country is a sh--hole and no human being is disposable.

I, Too
by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

(Read the rest at The Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Bookseed. 

Poetry Friday: To the New Year, by W.S. Merwin

I love this one.

Happy Poetry Friday, Happy New Year, Happy Hope.


To the New Year
By W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
....
(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~

The round up this week is at Reading to the Core. 

What I Read in 2017

Let me start by saying it wasn't nearly as much as I'd planned to read.

Gosh, somehow, after Friday morning, July 28th (when Atticus got the cancer diagnosis), the year just kind of got away from me. August was that blur of tests and MRIs and scheduling and worrying. It wasn't always easy to concentrate. I do remember finishing Middlemarch while I was staying in the hospital with Atticus. He was asleep one morning, and all was quiet, even the nurses and their ever-present checks on vitals. Then there were blurry days of recovery at home, and difficulty concentrating again, and just as he was getting back to some semblance of normal, the blurriness, the tests, the doctors' appointments were happening with Betsy.

And yet.

Books.

The one constant in our lives.

The list is all I have time to share today, but in the days to come, I hope to blog more about what I loved, what I didn't, and what I want to read in 2018.


The 2017 Book List (including read-alouds with Ramona):

The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron
Anne's House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery
The Spindlers, Lauren Oliver
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Magnolia Story, Chip and Joanna Gaines
Stitches, Anne Lamott
Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham
11-22-63, Stephen King
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Dragonspell, Donita K. Paul
The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill
Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin
Echoes, Maeve Binchy
The Year of Living Danishly, Helen Russell
Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
Black as Night, Regina Doman
The Wheel on the School, Meindert deJong
The Mother Daughter Book Club, Heather Frederick Vogel
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Beauty & the Beast (a Camp NaNo novel by my daughter, Betsy)
A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny
Emma in the Night, Wendy Walker
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
Our Souls at Night, Kent Haruf
Design Your Day, Claire Diaz Ortiz
Untitled (Another NaNo book by Betsy)
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery
Reading People, Anne Bogel
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
Emily's Quest, L.M. Montgomery
The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin
The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
Dark Matter, Blake Crouch
Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown

~~~~~

What did you read last year?