Yesterday (Saturday) Michael’s column appeared in Springfield News-Leader and today it came out in the News-Leader e-edition. This week it will appear in five other newspapers in Missouri, Kansas, and South Dakota. Thank you, Michael, for adding your wit and wisdom to our growing conversation about poetry and how it impacts our lives. As always, I ask you the reader to share the link with all who might also enjoy what we are doing.
This weekend my guest on Poetry from Daily Life will be MICHAEL SALINGER, who lives in Mentor, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He and his mate, SARAH HOLBROOK, have visited schools across the United States and more than 50 other countries, providing author visits, professional development and classroom workshops in writing, comprehension strategies. Michael’s advice? “The easiest way to incorporate poetry into one’s daily life is not to read or write poetry.” What? Well that’s Michael and his sense of humor. You know he’s not going to leave it at that.
Michael’s thought provoking column will appear in print in Springfield News-Leader on Saturday (Have I thanked you recently, Editor-in-Chief AMOS BRIDGES?) and in the e-edition on Sunday. I’ll share the link to that on Sunday.
Eighty years ago our family moved back to Springfield from Ajo, Arizona, where we had lived for the previous four years. War War II had just ended and veterans were coming home. Housing was hard to come by. All Dad could find, in our price range anyway, was a little place on a farm where the owner raised show horses. There was a small living room section that held our radio and some chairs, and a kitchen with an ice chest and a sink with a pump that brought in water for cooking and for filling the large tub we placed on the floor for bathing. Across the front was a porch that had been closed in to make a bedroom. Mom and Dad’s bed was tucked against one wall, mine against the opposite wall, and a pot-belly coal stove stood between us. There was no electricity. The privy was out back. The 1945 winter was cold and our little place was drafty. Several nights that month the low temperatures ranged from 10 to -5 degrees. On frigid nights after the fire in the stove went out, water in a glass beside my bed would freeze to ice. We slept in our clothes with all the extra bedding we owned on top of our blankets. I went to bed each night with a hot-water bottle tucked between my legs. That helped until the water cooled. Then it became a clammy, rubbery nuisance when I wanted to turn over. Years later I wrote of the experience in my book, Connecting Dots.
Welcome to Missouri
Cold surrounds my warm spot. Rolling over is like touching snow. I think of snow angels.
With extra clothes piled on the bed, I think of chalk outlines. “This is where we found the frozen body.”
I miss my friends. I hate this house, the coal stove with its belly full of cold ashes.
Dad says soon we’ll find something better.
A prisoner inside my own outline, I wait for morning.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 