Day 28 of 30: #verselove with Susie Morice

Susie Morice spent 30 years in the public school classrooms in the St. Louis, Missouri area.  Long a Gateway Writing Project and Missouri Writing Project veteran, Susie loves what the National Writing Project has done for ELA teachers. Since retiring, Susie worked with professional development in writing, taught education classes at University of Missouri-St. Louis, Fontbonne University, and St. Louis University.  She currently is a writer and editor for the Santa Fe Center for Transformational School Leadership, which partners with Washington University and publishes her writings and others writings on transformation in our schools. Between all that serious monkey-business, Susie plays guitar, sings, writes music and poetry, and reads (of course!) … certainly where her heart is these days. 

Inspiration

The Morning After… we go through so many moments in our lives…whether they are great big deals or little daily hits, jabs, or wows.  I’d like to think that we have balanced, even, reliably predictable lives, but the truth is that we all go through myriad jolts.  Some are funny epiphanies (wow! I didn’t know I could choke that down – think colonoscopy preparation – ewww, well, maybe don’t think that.  LOL!…but you get the idea). Or the morning after a big storm… or the morning after delivering those difficult words to someone you love[d]… Anyway, to be human is to get ourselves to the other sides of experiences…the side that opens the window to a new view, an epiphany, an insight, a relief, etc.  Sometimes they are big watershed moments, sometimes just little pivots.

I was inspired by a poem published in the NYTimes Magazine on Sunday, March 8, 2020.  “Waking After the Surgery” is by Leila Chatti and from her debut poetry collection, Deluge; she’s a Tunisian-American poet in Lansing, MI and the poem was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the NYT. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/magazine/poem-waking-after-the-surgery.html

Waking After the Surgery by Leila Chatti

And just like that, I was whole again,

seam like a drawing of an eyelid closed,
gauze resting atop it like a bed

of snow laid quietly in the night
while I was somewhere or something

else, not quite dead but nearly, freer,
my self unlatched for a while as if it were

a dog I had simply released from its leash
or a balloon slipped loose from my grip

in a room with a low ceiling, my life
bouncing back within reach, my life

bounding toward me when called.

Process

• Brainstorm two lists: one of little moments from which you’ve emerged anew, the other those bigger “moments” of major epiphanies in your life.
• Select one of the moments (set the others aside for poems you might write down the road) and make a list of descriptors and power verbs that capture your movement from the mess to the “aha” or “other side” or “morning after” you put that moment’s slam behind you.  
• Whittle away and play with “white spaces” and “wordplay,” letting your poem take shape that layers meaning into words that offer multiple interpretations and line breaks that let us feel the rhythm of your moment.  
• Have fun!  If this works for you, have at it.  If you choose another poetic energy, go for it.  We just love to write and love to read each other’s hearts that fill the poems on ethicalela.com .   The mentor poems here are a short one and one a bit longer – do not feel obligated to any particular length…do what works for you.  When I wrote my poem, it was only about a dozen lines, but I worked with white space and line breaks to help the flow and rhythm at bit… it looks longer, but… it is what it is.  

CLASSROOM NOTE:  Processing movement or shift from one stage to another always involves looking at two sides of a fulcrum… Think of it as 3 stages: 1) where we were, 2) the pivotal moment of shift, and 3) where we are now after the moment of change.  That helps shape a Morning After poem. It also shapes novels. It shapes character development, before and after events/trauma.  It shapes the mathematics of levers and torque to calculate fulcrum in physics. It shapes chemical reactions… you get the picture:  this is a universal type of exercise.

Susie’s Poem

The Morning After COVID-19

Months plodded on,
clocks in a gaited rhythm
we wanted to notice
but found atonal, acrid,
till the morning
when it was gone,
sated,
extinguished
along with those we loved
and lost,
till time turned the page.
The morning after,
the weight of water shed,
we pulled from beds
where we languished, immobilized
against a silent, unseen,
unforeseen,
indifferent assassin,
an acid rain of terror,
till we set our feet upon the floor,
steadied our legs
and stepped outside our doors
to hold our neighbors in long embraces,
feel the human touch
lay away our distance,
talk face to face,
touch hands,
breathe each other’s breath,
welcome the air that other’s exhaled
and knew our differences
mattered not a whit
against the common ground
holding us
new
in a balance.

by Susie Morice©

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