Ralph Fletcher - A Writing Kind of Day

WORDSONG
Honesdale, Pennsylvania

For Cynthia Rylantyour
delicious poems and stories
continue to inspire me.
RF

Text copyright 2005 by Ralph Fletcher
Illustrations copyright 2005 by Boyds Mills Press

All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
please contact

WordSong
An Imprint of Boyds Mills Press, Inc.
815 Church Street
Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
Printed in the United States of America

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Fletcher, Ralph.
A writing kind of day : poems for young poets / by Ralph Fletcher ;
illustrations by April Ward.1st ed.
[32] p. : ill. ; cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59078-276-7 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-59078-353-5 (pb) 978-1-62979-274-3 (ebook)
1. Childrens poetry, American. I. Ward, April. II. Title.
811/.6 22 PS586.3F64 2005

First edition
First Boyds Mills Press paperback edition, 2005
The text of this book is set in Optima.

Illustration and Design by April M. Ward

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

Photograph credits:
Comstock Images; 1995 by Jason Stemple, Water Music, Boyds Mills Press

It is raining today,
a writing kind of day.

Each word hits the page
like a drop in a puddle,
creating a tiny circle

of trembling feeling

that ripples out
and gathers strength
ringing toward the stars

My brother Tom says hes a hundredaire
with two hundred fifty dollars
in his bank account.

Dads a thousandaire.
I gave baby Julia two pennies
so now shes a pennyaire.

When I look at Julia
her little bald head
reminds me of the planet Earth.

I put that in my writers notebook
to maybe write a poem later on;
it feels like money in the bank.

My sister is three months old.
Her name is Julia
but I call her Earth Head.

Shes bald on top
so on her North Pole
theres mostly Arctic tundra.

For all the most interesting parts
eyes, nose, and mouth
you have to look at the equator.

Its not like losing a wallet,
or even your best friend.

Losing your memory is
losing yourself.

Each sentence Grandma speaks
makes me think of crossing a river.

She steps from word to word
until suddenly

she stops in the middle, disoriented.
Should she go back or keep going?

Mom takes Grandma by the hand
and helps her safely to the other side.

Seems like my friend Xander
can write poems in his sleep,
good ones that win prizes.

I asked him how he does it
and he gave me his recipe
which I followed carefully:

two similes, one metaphor,
three unusual words,
and a dash of rhyme.

But my poem came out so bad
I felt like feeding it
to my Venus flytrap.

So I threw away his recipe
and tried one of my own,
a poem about my Grandma.

For my first ingredient I chose
her warped cutting board
that always smelled like garlic.

I wanted to add her wrinkly elbows
and the way she hums
while kneading her bread dough.

I picked up my best friends pen
that Ive kept in a drawer
ever since he moved away.

I took a deep breath,
opened my notebook,
and started to write.

My Grandma loves to cook Italian:
manicotti, veal cutlet parmesan,
crusty bread like youve never had.

Over the years shes cut so much garlic
the smell is soaked forever
into her warped cutting board.

Now shes losing her memory.
But she still remembers
the summer I was three.

You loved to play with the garden hose
but you kept turning around to say:
DONT SHUT IT OFF, GRANDMA!

She nods off while were talking,
the skin on her hands so white
it could almost be made from clouds.

I slide a pillow behind her head,
wrap the old blue blanket around her,
whisper: Dont shut it off, Grandma.

Its easy to make one,
lying on your back
in the newest snow.

You sweep your arms
up and down to make
a pattern that looks like wings.

Later you forget your creation,
go inside for some hot chocolate.
Thats when she rises from the snow,

takes a feathery breath, tries her wings.
She skims over frozen lakes
like the faintest handwriting.

Later when you climb beneath the covers,
she peers in through your frosty window,
happy you called her into the world.

My teacher says to use
metaphors and similes
whenever we write poems.

My brother Tom swoops in
like an F5 tornado
and destroys my bedroom.

Hes a human wrecking ball
that crashes through my room
leaving trampled toys behind.

But Id rather write it like this:
Ive got an evil little brother.
And just leave it at that.

Were doing grammar in school
which is bad enough but now
its infiltrating my dreams.

I dreamed I was playing football
against a huge run-on sentence
Coach said I had to stop him.

I threw a wicked block on that sentence
that knocked him into the next paragraph
and dislocated three compound words.

Verbs cracked! Nouns splattered!
That big sentence just splintered.
Til. Only. Fragments. Were. Left!

Theyre predicting a big term paper
due to arrive on Monday morning.

Tuesday the forecast looks bad:
intense DOL and grammar drills.

Wednesday will be a scorcher
when the state writing test arrives.

Thursday theres a high probability
of five-paragraph essays.

Friday should bring some relief
when scattered poetry blows in.