insect poems in my traveling poetry class & teaching syllables to young sisters through a dolly parton song.

in late december, my traveling poetry class focused on insects, but we often explore other topics, too, so some subjects went off into reflections of geese and fields of stubble-cut corn and a man passing a high school girlfriend outside of a storefront once he's greying and has been through two divorces, older and not sure if he is wiser. 

and barbara tucker had a great line about deer: it's the dawn and dusk that they love the most.

we met at steel city coffee house in phoenixville, chester county, for the first time in months and sat next to the faux-fire. 

this orange-moving blur against the wall prompted interest from two young sisters who sat near us because they wanted to be near those flames, too, and we didn't blame them one bit for that. their names were ryan, 5, and taylor, 7. 

ryan, with silvery blonde hair shining even in winter, asked, are you a teacher ? i said yes and pointed out who my students were, sitting around me.

their father sat nearby. we first started with reading "my tennessee mountain home" by dolly parton for its poetic lyrics and talk of june bugs, which we wouldn't have guessed are the copper-backed beetles you can sometimes see out in your backyard in warmer seasons.

i gave the little girls copies of the lyrics to read and follow along with and let them know they could take them home with them. young ryan was especially excited at the prospect of finding the song on youtube later with her ipad. 

i asked the sisters if they knew what syllables were. they said no. so i explained them sound-wise, and i asked them to count the syllables of certain words in parton's song. i used my fingertips to help them notice the math better. they grew accurate very quickly and beamed at their sudden success. i told them to keep counting syllables in life after they left, as we knew they were about to say goodbye soon.

ryan offered to spell "man" for me, since she knew the letters in the correct order, and then she went on to spell "cat." i asked how to spell "car," and taylor helped in noting that if you take out the ''t,'' and you put an ''r' there instead, you have ''car.''

these moments were actually pretty brief, as the family left in not too long. but we loved these minutes deeply, in easy agreement as a class. plus, my two students of the day were retired teachers.

scenes from steel city coffee house and some of our shared writings are below. the poem by jim harrison is one from out in the world. he is a good friend of former u.s. poet ted kooser who served in his position from 2004 to 2006.