"Rhapsody" for November

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Jama's Alphabet Soup for Roundup, where she is offering up HOPE, which is pretty essential, isn't it? Thank you,  Jama. What an emotional week this has been... and I've had the stomach flu. Feeling MUCH better now, thank you very much! Nothing like a few sick days to make one extra grateful for those good-health days. Wow.

So I have a lovely little poem for you, and some sheep. Yep. Read on!

Rhapsody

I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of tomorrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.

-William Stanley Braithwaite

Speaking of sheep, have you read THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape by James Rebanks? I loved learning about these sheep families and the whole world of Beatrix Potter. (And now I totally want to watch again MISS POTTER.) It's a hard life, methinks, with so much out of one's control. But it's also obviously rewarding. I particularly enjoyed the lessons of such a life:

"We don't give up, even when things go bad.

We pay our debts.

We work hard.

We act decently.

We help our neighbors if they need it.

We do what we say we will do.

We don't want much attention.

We look after our own.

We are proud of what we do.

We try to be quietly smart.

We take chances sometimes to get on.

We will fail sometimes.We will be affected by the wider world...

But we hold on to who we are."

Here's to holding on to who we are in the midst of wider world events! 

And finally, here again is my NCTE schedule -- even though there's glaring typo AND we've added Laura Purdie Salas to the Nonfiction Roundtable! Even better, right?? I know I will be seeing a number of you... very excited!