Hope is The Thing with Feathers

Ms Willett has been working on Poetry with the 8th graders. I remember those painful painful classes as a teacher. I had learned to love poetry from such a teacher and but getting past that resistance is a challenge. I always find it ironic that children who raised with lots and lots of nusery rhymes, rhyming music/jinggles and play ground chants are so afraid of poetry when they face it on the written paper. It scares them for some reason. I have no fear that Ms. Willett is up for the challenge.

I loved that when M-E was working on the poetry, she was reading it outloud. It so needs to have voice and not remain in someone's mind. She was looking at some Emily Dickinson poems and I was helping her find some from the books we have at home and found one that I thought had a special message for me.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sing the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

As we travel through Lent and as Mary-Elizabeth continues to remain in remission, I am so greatful for the presence of hope.