Summer Swap Poems

If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--
~Frances Hodgson Burnett

What makes the Poem Swaps really special to me is how much I like the people I'm swapping with *happy sigh*

But before I share poems that I have received from my swapping buddies this summer, I'd like to point you to a couple of recent poetry-related articles (and I'm including a video at the bottom):

* Reading poetry written by jihadists could shed new light on extremism
* How a poem helped save a suicidal teen’s life

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Small Summer Sonnet
for Tabatha Yeatts

Cicada buzzing,
rhythm of summer.
Heat of wings rising,
vibrating drummer.
Soft silence lazing
as sunsets linger.
Slow misty hazing.
Firefly lights glimmer.
A bird’s sound phrasing
songs we remember.
Harsh storms surprising
wary child swimmer.
Uncompromising
dragonfly wonder.

by Margaret Simon

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Dragonflies

We watched dragonflies
twirl and dance
among the reeds at the pond,
their bodies light and airy.
No shutter could snap fast enough
to capture their beauty
so we just stood there— watching,
wondering.
So it is with these passing days
our own bodies heavy with grief or pain,
we can stand for a moment,
watch fleeting dragonflies,
and know hope is in their wings.

--Margaret Simon, August 2014

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Here's the bonus video I mentioned:

Scratch-Off Poems with Mary Ruefle and Agustina Woodgate from Tobias Rodriguez-Wynwood on Vimeo.

"Scratch-Off Poems" is a project from O, Miami 2014 co-created by artist Agustina Woodgate and poet Mary Ruefle. Woodgate made two scratch-off lottery ticket designs that incorporated an original poem commissioned from Mary Ruefle. During April 2014, 2500 of the tickets were distributed around Miami-Dade County via local businesses and events.

How it worked: Using a penny or a fingernail, participants scratched off the missing pieces in the words of the poem. If those words matched the words at the top of the ticket, s/he won an O, Miami t-shirt with a poem sewn inside. 1 out of 100 tickets was a winner.

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Margaret is the Poetry Friday host today.