NPM: Two Original Rain Poems & A Book Recommendation: Post #19

We've had a lot of rain lately. I thought I'd post a couple of rain poems that I wrote several years ago.

PUDDLE MUDDLE

I’m in the middle of a puddle…

in the middle…

in a muddle.

The puddle’s much too deep.

It spilled

into my boots.

Now they’re filled

with muddy water

to the brim.

I hope my feet

know how to swim!

IT'S RAINING

It’s raining…
Raining all around.
It’s raining puddles
On the ground.
It’s raining
On my booted feet.
It’s raining
Rivers in the street.
It’s raining cats.
It’s raining dogs.
It’s raining ponds
For polliwogs.
It’s raining
Drop by drop by drop…
A billion trillion—
It won’t stop!
It’s raining buckets
From the sky.
Don’t think the earth
Will EVER dry.

***************

More poems about rain can be found in ONE BIG RAIN: Poems for Rainy Days, which was compiled by Rita Gray and illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke.

 

One Big Rain is one delightful little anthology of poems about rain that takes readers through the year. Its twenty poems are divided equally among the four seasons. Most of the poems are brief; many paint vivid images with their words.

Gray selected several fine haikus for her book—including this one by Sora:

stars on the pond—
again, a pitter-patter
of winter rain

In One Big Rain, Gray includes works by well-known poets like Lilian Moore, Eve Merriam, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg—as well as works by poets whose names may not be familiar to many readers. The book also contains two poems translated from other languages (Norwegian and Spanish): Rain by Sigbjorn and The Sower by R. Olivares Figueroa. One of the things I like best about the One Big Rain is finding a few of my favorite weather poems that I haven’t read in anthologies in a long time.

One of those “favorite” poems is Eve Merriam’s Summer Rain. Here’s an excerpt from it:

A tickle, a trickle
A million-dot freckle
Speckles the spotted rain.

Like a cinnamon
Geranium
Smells the rainingest rain.

And here’s an excerpt from another “favorite”— Lilian Moore’s Weather Report:

Ice-bearing trees,
a glass
orchard,
blinking
sunwinking.

A noonwind will
pass,
harvesting the brittle crop,
crashing
clinking.

 ***************

 

BOOK GIVEAWAY

I'm giving away a copy of YOU JUST WAIT: A Poetry Friday Power Book by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. It's would be an excellent classroom resource for teachers of "tweens and teens."

To be entered into the drawing for the book, all you have to do is to comment on any of my Wild Rose Reader posts that I publish from April 23rd through April 30th. I'll announce the winner on Wednesday, May 1st.