Friday, April 20, 2007

Poetry Friday - Two Poems

Gregory K. at GottaBook and Elaine at Wild Rose Reader have been posting original poems each day in honor of National Poetry Month. These talented and creative overachievers have inspired me to revisit some of my own work. Today I share two science poems, one original and one by a favorite author.

First, here's a poem I wrote for my middle school students when we were studying reptiles.
My Shell
Carapace of brown and black,
heavy shield upon my back.
Ribs and backbone fused to it,
all to my body carefully knit.
Protection of the toughest kind,
impossible to leave behind.
The second poem today (and one somewhat related to mine) comes from J. Patrick Lewis. I'm just crazy about his work. Please Bury Me in the Library is laugh-out-loud funny, and I use both Arithme-Tickle: An Even Number of Odd Riddle Rhymes and Scien-Trickery: Riddles in Science in my classes. Students seem to love the poems as much as I do.

So, without further ado, poem number 2 comes from Scien-Trickery.
Shell Game
Here is where
The giant tortoise
Moves as slow as
Rigor mortis.

Darwin studied
Awesome fauna-
Finches, cormo-
rants, iguanas

On this scien-
tific shore
Off the coast of
Ecuador.
For the answer to the riddle, view this short clip. If you haven't yet seen the National Geographic film, you should!

Happy poetry Friday, all.

1 comment:

  1. What amazing poems. I am glad I stopped by.

    ReplyDelete