Let me be the shadow
under your bloom,
the stone that
lifts you,
the lichen that
breaks rock to soil. Continue reading
Category Archives: Poetry
Words Keep Me
implacable rain
drenches skin, soil and stem but
my words keep me dry
Copyright 2018 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
A Book by the Brook — Meet My Family!
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
— William Shakespeare
Meet my Family! has adorable baby animals comparing notes on families. A raccoon kit grows up with a single-mom but a titi monkey hangs out with his dad. Swans have both parents and sea turtles have none. Laysan albatross chicks have two moms and chinstrap penguin chicks have two dads. Any kind of family unit you can imagine is normal to someone. Laura Purdie Salas wrote each animal baby a poem, and Stephanie Fizer Coleman brought them to life with her art. Continue reading
By the Brambles
Groundhogs amble past brambles.
Winter torpor adds a weighty waddle
to their dandelion waltz. Continue reading
A Book by the Brook — Don’t Ask a Dinosaur
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
— William Shakespeare
This light romp from Deborah Bruss and Matt Forest Esenwine has loads of laughs as dinos try wrapping presents and baking cakes in Don’t Ask a Dinosaur. The text has loads of those tough dino names, all with dots to separate the syllables into pronounceable snack-sizes. And it scans smoothly and rhymes! I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Plus, Louie Chin did a wonderful job bringing the dinos to vivid but not-too-scary life. Continue reading
Orchid Haiku
Angel Spring
Fresh rain dimples
Mother Ocean,
intertwining with brine
in frothy swells, Continue reading
Why Salt Marshes?
Minnows swim. Crabs hide.
Tides roll in, tides roll out,
drowned to drought.
Plovers pipe. Wren nest.
Mussels and clams filter waste
and toxins out. Continue reading
Progressive Poem
For the second April in a row, I’m contributing a line, the eleventh here, to a community poem, developed like film in different darkrooms, forming a picture-poem for kids:
Nestled in her cozy bed, a seed stretched.
Oh, what wonderful dreams she had had! Continue reading
A Book by the Brook — Read! Read! Read!
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
— William Shakespeare
From its cover image of a book as a flying carpet to “stories/ that fly like birds”, Read! Read! Read! uplifts and envigorates. Poems by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater dance happily beside Ryan O’Rourke’s illustrations, and my favorite is the happy child disappearing into a magazine with actual magic! Really! Continue reading
Signs of Spring
snow doesn’t stick
buds burst, robins return
it’s spring
Copyright 2018 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
Under the Snow
Under the snow
that falls today,
are blooms that
smell like blue sky
and sunshine.
Copyright 2018 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
Friendly Fairy Tales 