haiku class

Had the best time teaching haiku to grades 4, 5, and 6 at a little country school today. (Another gig courtesy of the library. I just love this writer-in-residence gig.)

There was a lot of energy in the kids, who were part from old-order Mennonite sects and part from pink-fuzzy Sweater sects. Many of them seemed to live on farms.

All their boots and sneakers were lined up in the hallway. Mud out there and a little smell of manure. The shoes growing bigger as I walk down the one hallway.

Out the window, a very pale cornfield — one girl writes it is glistening in the sun. It is, like fish scales. A menno girl in plain dark calico and an elaborate crown of braids writes:

golden ears of corn
on pale corn stalks

I saw a field being harvested with a team of dray horses. The next field was already harvested and being harrowed, also by horse. It was rougher than a combined field, much more bare, quite black. Startling, the contrast between the pale corn and the black earth. I saw many horses, pastured and working, and one flock of white-white geese on a small black pond.

One of the kids wrote

My beautiful horse
had a beautiful foal
too close to winter

And another:

I walk slowly home
the leaves fall on me

And another

The malpes are fire colour
We are bourning lefs
The smoke smells yello