Poetry Friday - Assorted Bits and School Buses

Happy poetry Friday all! I have some odds and ends and an old favorite to share today.

This week's poetry stretch was to write a Lai. The Lai is a French syllabic verse form consisting of one or more stanza of nine lines with two rhymes. This was a tough challenge, but many folks took up the gauntlet. You can learn more about this form and read the results at Monday Poetry Stretch - The Lai. 

If you haven't been to David Harrison's blog lately, you've missed a lot of fun. J. Patrick Lewis contributed poems for a form he calls First Lines, Bowlderized. Many wonderful writers contributed their own poems. Do stop by and check them out!

Many have gone back to school, while others will return next week. This time of year always reminds me of this poem.

School Buses

by Russell Hoban

(found in The Pedaling Man and Other Poems) 

You'd think that by the end of June they'd take themselves

Away, get out of sight -- but no, they don't; they

Don't at all. You see them waiting through

July in clumps of sumac near the railroad, or

Behind a service station, watching, always watching for a

Child who's let go of summer's hand and strayed. I have

Seen them hunting on the roads of August -- empty buses

Scanning woods and ponds with rows of empty eyes. This morning

I saw five of them, parked like a week of

Schooldays, smiling slow in orange paint and

Smirking with their mirrors in the sun --

But summer isn't done! Not yet!

The round up today is being hosted by Sylvia Vardell at Poetry for Children. Be sure to visit and take in all the great poetry being shared this week.