Poetry Friday: Ramona and Billy Collins

Ramona started a new poetry program for herself this semester. She came to me on Sunday, with a homemade dry-erase board* (which is so pretty that I want her to make one for me!) and this is what it said:

She gave me the instructions for her assignment (or is it my assignment?): 

I am to choose one poem per day, and write the title on the board. I can tell her, generally, where in the house she might find the book, but then she has to hunt it down, read the poem, and then we will discuss it. 

Okay. So. It started off well. I chose a poem for her for Monday. Billy Collins. Nice start, eh? But then she was hit with her Cold-n-Cough 2.0, and the rest of the week went a little downhill from there. (Technically, we were "starting school" this week, but you know how that can go during cold/flu season....) 

Anyway, I promise to do better next week, once Ramona is better, and I'm better (I seem to have picked up her sore throat, which is not the best timing, given that I have a two-hour, live radio interview tomorrow.) But in the meantime, here is the first pick for Ramona's new poetry program. This is from Billy Collins's  Sailing Alone Around the Room: 

Snow

by Billy Collins 

I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk solo 

seems to go somehow

with the snow

that is coming down this morning, 

how the notes and the spaces accompany 

its easy falling 

(I can't find the poem in its entirety online, so just click through to the link, click "Look Inside" and enter "snow" in the search box. It's on page 105.) 

The Poetry Friday round up today is at Mainely Write. 

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*Ramona is cursed to have me for a mom. She is so crafty and artistic, so busy creating something new all the time, that it's hard to believe she is my flesh and blood. But I remember those nine months of carrying her, so I'm quite sure she's mine, and that makes her the living proof (one of three incredible living proofs) that I, too, can create something extraordinary.