Week 2 of NaNoWriMo and my novel is starting to get overlooked, just like it has right around this time in the past couple NaNos. Gotta fix that. Why are poetry words easier to pound out than novel words?
Home Learning
a poem by Lauren Hallstrom
Yesterday I found my old school globe
in the closet where I left it after graduating high school
and I balanced it in my hands
and noticed how every country is a different color.
It was squeaking on its axle and the equator sticker was peeling off
and I said to myself, “So this is what it is like to hold the world in your hands.”
And perhaps it is, though it would be certainly a little less dusty, and
this one weighs less than I thought it would.
If an ant were to find its way onto this spherical toy right now
and traverse the Atlantic Ocean and get stuck on the equator sticker,
it would be like the entire state of Florida uprooting itself and deciding
to go on a cruise.
Somewhere around here
is the inflatable beach ball Earth
we bought for homeschool when I was ten,
probably sitting on a shelf,
slightly deflated and embracing its wrinkles.
Maybe if I could hold it,
I would let it slip through my fingers,
just to see if it would bounce.
Lauren Hallstrom 