One Little Word for 2015

wee "wild" me

Hello, and happy Poetry Friday! Please visit Tricia (whom I was so lucky to meet at NCTE!) at The Miss Rumphius Effect for Roundup.

First: It's been a float-y couple of days what with learning DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST was included in the 2014 Nerdy Book Awards and as a 2014 CYBILS Finalist. I am so thrilled and grateful! Special thanks to all my Nerdy friends including one Mary Lee Hahn who wrote such a beautiful post about some beautiful poetry books. Thank you! And to Amy at Hope is the Word (who nominated the book!) and to the CYBILS Poetry Round One judges (Kelly Fineman, Nancy Bo Flood, Tricia Stohr-Hunt, Jone MacCulloch, Margaret Simon, Sylvia Vardell & Bridget R. Wilson), throwing you kisses! Having served on the committee in the past, I know just how hard it can be to winnow the list. I'm so honored you chose to include WILDEBEEST. Poetry popsicles for everyone!!

And now: I'm thrilled to be sharing with you my 2015 One Little Word  - and some related poetry:

WILD (adj.): Occurring, growing, or living in a natural state (The Free Dictionary)

No, I'm not talking the girls-gone-wild kind of wild. More of a return to, or discovery of, the true-est me.

The kind of wild that's found in the following poems:

The Summer Day
by  Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean --
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaw back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
How she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
I don't know exactly what prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

And here are a couple of other rather famous "wild" poems. Any others come to mind?? I think I will work on a Wild Poetry Playlist during 2015. If YOU have a "wild" poem, please do share! xo

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

"Wild Nights - Wild Nights! (249)" by Emily Dickinson

p.s. Want to see what magic two musically-minded high school kids (one of whom is my son...) can create?? They are in 9th grade. :) They'll Be Going Far!