Robyn Hood Black - children's author, poet, artist

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!

 

In the midst of all the turmoil this week, I'd like to pause and wish a Happy Pride Month to all who celebrate.  

 

Here's the middle part of a very old poem praising rainbows, by Romantic poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835).  It's not about Pride Month, of course, but perhaps it will bring a smile.

 

Excerpt from "The Rainbow" 

 

But mark! what arch of varied hue
From heaven to earth is bowed?
Haste, ere it vanish, haste to view
The Rainbow in the cloud.

 

How bright its glory! there behold
The emerald's verdant rays,
The topaz blends its hue of gold
With the deep ruby's blaze.

 

Yet not alone to charm thy sight
Was given the vision fair;?
Gaze on that arch of colored light,
And read God's mercy there.

 

I found a reference to the poem here, with a link to the full poem here. 

 

For a lovely poem celebrating May 17, 2004, the date Massachusetts first issued marriage certificates to same-sex couples, please find Lesléa Newman's triolet, "To Have and To Hold." It begins with these lines:

 

On May 17th, two by two, side by side,

Surrounded by love, we were bursting with pride.

 

You can read Lesléa Newman's blog post describing that jubilant day here.

 

This poem was also included in the National Geographic volume for young readers, The Poetry of Us, edited by J. Patrick Lewis and published in 2018. 

 

This week the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination and the one I grew up in, passed a resolution calling for the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's 10-year-old nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage.   (Click here for the PBS story, while we can still consult PBS.)

 

Why LGBTQ love is so threatening to some straight folks, I will never understand. 

 

While we're on the subject, and since we're literature lovers,  let me give a shout-out to a long-time young friend of mine, Garrett R. Chase, founder and executive director of the Queer Liberation Network.  Based in Texas, QLN's mission is "Empowering queer and trans individuals to thrive by providing inclusive support, resources, and advocacy." Garrett has put together a wonderful fundraiser which kicks off later in July, a literary auction!  He's a voracious reader and talented writer himself, and he loves making connections.  There are some awesome signed books, critique opportunities, and other treasures to bid on here. Check it out! 

 

And be sure to check out the Poetry Friday Roundup at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town hosted by our lovely Ruth this week.  She's on a stateside visit from Uganda, and she's sharing fireflies with us. Thanks, Ruth!

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! 

 

Just a wee birdie update here this week. Two weeks ago, I shared a photo of the house finch nest in the hanging fern on our front porch.  All FIVE babies hatched, and they're all still here.  I had feared we had a single mom doing all the work, but when Morgan and her human baby chicks were here last weekend, she spotted the male.  No deadbeat dad after all!

 

Audubon tells me they will fledge between 12-15 days, which should be any time now.  They barely fit in the nest!!

 

Here are a few lines from Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) about bird nests, and social "climbing," perhaps?

 

 

For every bird a nest (79)

By Emily Dickinson

 

For every bird a nest,

 

Wherefore in timid quest

 

Some little wren goes seeking round.

 

Wherefore where boughs are free,

 

Households in every tree,

 

Pilgrim be found ?

 

Perhaps a home too high —

 

Ah, aristocracy ! —

 

The little wren desires.

 

The lark is not ashamed

 

To build upon the ground

 

Her modest house.

 

Yet who of all the throng

 

Dancing around the sun

 

Does so rejoice?

 

 

Wing your way over to see Karen for this week's Roundup! Thanks, Karen.  :0) & Congrats on the recent family wedding!  

Next week we'll be on the road to celebrate our first baby grand's THIRD birthday.  How did that happen so fast?  Will catch up when we return.  Happy SOON-to-be-JUNE!

Happy Holiday Weekend!  I've been dancing with deadlines this week and will have a happy houseful these next few days, so I'm just waving.  Feeling deep gratitude this Memorial Day for all who have served and those who died for the values which our imperfect nation has embodied for 250 years, and which I hope will hold.  Thanks to all military families.  The Roundup this week is being hosted by the multi-talented Michelle, who welcomes us with red-winged blackbirds. 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Greetings from "Travelers Nest," to be precise.  We live in Travelers Rest, but when we bought this house a few years ago, I had a little sign made for the front porch that says, "Travelers Nest."

 

I'm always excited when birds nest near us.  (Though I've had to stop putting a spring wreath on the front door; we need to use the door!) 

 

This year we replaced an old bird house with a new nesting box for bluebirds.  Two, actually.  I've seen activity at both (one out front and one in the back), but know the back one was definitely used, with a mom and dad going in and out over recent weeks.  It's quiet now; curiosity got me today, so I lifted the little side door which has a hard plastic "wall" to peek through.  Definitely a lot of nesting material going on (I'd seen pine straw through cracks in the bottom), but also remnants of, well, birds living there - so much that I couldn't see through.  So I slid my cell phone through the opening at the top and took some pictures.  Honestly, I can't make heads or tails of the messy situation in there, but I hope it led to baby birds which fledged while we were gone (maybe during the wedding week or such).  I'll have to clean it out for the next time!

 

At the front of the house, I did see cardinals going in and out of the Chinese Fringe bushes we have at the front porch, maybe a month or so ago.  I haven't been able to tell if they've really used the nest they built, as it's hard to see without making a ruckus, and I haven't wanted to encourage the dog to bark at them through the railing! 

 

But one nest has for sure resulted in eggs.  No sooner had I brought home a couple of hanging ferns for the front porch than I started seeing a small brown blur when I'd go out there. So small and so fast; I haven't been able to 100 percent identify it. It's not a Carolina wren; we used to host a pair every year back in Georgia. I was thinking sparrow (there are several kinds, of course!) but now I'm pretty convinced this little mama is a house finch. Yesterday after she'd flown off for a minute, I grabbed my phone and held it above the hanging basket, and I discovered the picture above - four eggs with one very brand new hatchling! 

 

So now I'm keeping the dog mostly away fom the porch and trying to give Little Bird Mama a wide berth if I have to open the door. I can see the silhouette of her wee brown head looking at me when I do! She's literally too fast for me to properly i.d. when she takes off. 

 

As the amazing David Sibley says:

 

Birders often struggle to distinguish the streaky brown birds, lumping them together with nicknames like "LBJs" (for "Little Brown Jobs"). Click here for more from BirdwatchingDaily.com. 

 

I haven't seen Dad; that would help. But the eggs look like house finch eggs. 

 

**FRIDAY MoRNiNG NEST UPDATE!** - ALL the eggs have hatched!  I snapped a quick (blind) pic on my phone when Mama briefly flew off this morning, and the nest is full of very fluffy babies!  I think there are four. :0)

 

Any bird nests in your realm?

 

Here's a little tribute to all of our feathered families, as a metaphor for our human ones, from British poet William Barnes (1801-1866):

 

 

HOME'S A NEST

 

O Home is a nest of the spring,

Where children may grow to take wing.

 

A nest where the young folk are bred

Up, to take on the work of the dead.

 

Where babes may grow women and men,

For the rearing of children again.

 

Where our children grow up to take on

Our own places, when we are all gone.

 

All forsaken, when children have flown,

Like a nest in the bush-top alone.

 

Where our children are bred to fulfil,

Not our own, but our Father's good will.

 

O, Home is a Nest!

 

 

The Home Book of Poetry, compiled by Dana Estes, Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1882.

 

We have so many wonderful books of bird poetry, several by talented members in our Poetry Friday community!  And, if haiku is for you, here's a little shout-out for the 2023 collection from bottle rockets press, Bird Whistle: A contemporary Anthology of Bird Haiku, Senryu & Short Poems, edited by Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro & Johnette Downing. I have a couple-few poems in there.  Here's the link! 

 

Thanks for coming by, and be sure to wing your way over to see Ramona at Pleasures from the Page for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

Greetings & Happy Mother's Day weekend! Extra hugs for those who have a hard time with this holiday. I actually flew south this weekend for a wee visit with my own mum.  See you next week, but be sure to check out the Poetry Friday Roundup hosted today by Sarah Grace Tuttle. (My phone is not letting me copy and paste the link, much less a hyperlink.) ;0)

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!

 

We're still catching our breath after a whirlwind but joyous weekend, celebrating the wedding of our son Seth and his lovely bride, Ginnie.  Those two had made things official last November at the courthouse, but we had the ceremony and the fun to-do's around the I-do's from Friday to Sunday. 

 

Seth picked a poem to be read during the ceremony, and my hubby Jeff ended up doing the honors. He was familiar with this work. 

 

"For Marriage" by poet and priest John O'Donohue has been shared at many a wedding, if the internet is any indication.  I couldn't find an official link for it, so I'll just share a couple of the eight couplets, the fourth and fifth:

 

 

As kindly as moonlight might search the dark,
So gentle may you be when light grows scarce.

 

As surprised as the silence that music opens,
May your words for each other be touched with reverence.

 

 

O'Donohue was born in 1956 in County Clare, Ireland, and died suddenly and much too soon in 2008.  You can learn more about him and his work at his legacy website: https://www.johnodonohue.com/.  I haven't listened to this yet, but the public radio program On Being has a link to an interview originally aired in 2005 here, with a YouTube video here. 

 

The poem, the address by pastor Brian, the vows and other elements were moving and beautiful.  Another wedding moment that was charming beyond description was when our grandson Sawyer, two-going-on-three, served as ring bearer.  We had all been practicing, but one never knows. Parents Morgan and Matt were in the wedding party, so they dropped off Sawyer to sit with me as they processed in.  Just before his big part, I slipped a green velvet cape over his head and let him take the two rings from their box.  With a little encouragement launching him forward, Sawyer walked solemnly to the front and gave the rings to Uncle Seth and Aunt Ginnie.  All to the tune of "Concerning Hobbits" from Lord of the Rings playing over the sound system (Ginnie's doing). Precious!

 

Speaking of magical beings and Ireland and such, as I write this on Thursday, it's May Day!  The fairies have been whispering to me in recent months, and I've been looking all over our property trying to find the perfect place for a secret project - a fairy garden. I've been collecting items from a dollar store and from Amazon, and got to work with a wheelbarrow and tools this week, hiding my progress until today.  I hope the wee grands love it!  It was all - ahem - for them, of course.  Yep.  For the grandbabes. (There's a short little video on my artsyletters Instagram & Facebook pages).

 

It might be May, but you can still go back and enjoy this year's April/Poetry Month Kidlit Progressive Poem, which just ended its journey with oh-so-talented April this week at Teaching Authors. 

And be sure to catch this week's Poetry Friday Roundup, which has moved to A(nother) Year of Reading  with our wonderful Mary Lee!

 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  We are more than halfway through Poetry Month. Time flies! 

 

April 17 is (was) International Haiku Poetry Day.  You can learn more about that here.

 

Each year, among its celebrations, The Haiku Foundation hosts the Earthrise Rolling Haiku Collaboration.  Haiku poets around the world are invited to submit haiku on a particular theme, with the editors choosing a "seed" poem to start it all off.  In theory, folks would add their poems at dawn, wherever they are.  But it's Thursday afternoon as I write this, and I just added a poem. It's dawn-o'clock somewhere. 

 

You can click that link to read about this year's theme and read several poems editor Jim Kacian included for inspiration, as well as the seed poem. 

 

In short, the poems relate to glaciers this year.  An apt image and metaphor for so many explorations.  

 

In snooping around online about my own area's geologic history, I wondered how far south glaciers came in the ice age.  They didn't cover the Southern Appalachians, which is one reason we have one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions in the world.  The geologic history (lots of species moved down here when the ice encroached), and the topography and climate (many variations of elevation and all kinds of microhabitats exist) - plus the stability of the mountain range - make for amazing discoveries around every bend. 

 

Because a haiku needs juxtaposition, and I like to write poems connected to my own sensory and lived experiences, I wondered if I could somehow incorporate the recent wildfires in our area. 

 

The Table Rock complex fire was the largest in upstate South Carolina's history, burning more than 15,000 acres last month. (My husband and I have a special connection to Table Rock, as that's where he proposed decades ago when we were at Furman, and we hiked it again year before last.) Turns out it also has a pond with roots in the Ice Age!  Who knew?  I don't know how the pond fared with the fire, but I hope it will live to see another mellinium or ten.  

 

 

wildfire smoke
a Pleistocene pond
in the watershed

 

Robyn Hood Black

 

 

Here's to slowing down for a poetic moment or two this week and this month....  To read the rolling haiku, some of which are responses to other posted poems, click here.

Our multi-talented and ever-reflective Jone Rush MacCulloch has the Roundup this week; Thanks, Jone.  Remember to follow the 2025 Kidlit Progressive Poem. And for all-things-Poetry-Month in the Kidlit bloggie realm, see Jama's roundup here.

I won't have a post next week, as it's our son Seth's and his bride Ginnie's wedding weekend! :0) Enjoy the rest of Poetry Month, and I'll see you with the May flowers. 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  As I type this on Thursday, it's rainy outside.  Lots of rain lately has been welcome; the recent Table Rock fires not far from us in upstate South Carolina are now 100 percent contained, and parts of the state park re-opened on Monday.  Even if I don't see rainbows outside, I feel them!

 

Rainbows are not confined to the sky, of course.  Our own Matt Forrest Essenwine went on a poetic rainbow hunt, and just look at what he brought back.  His new collection, A Universe of Rainbows - Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers), introduces young readers (and readers of all ages!) to rainbows all around us in both expected and surprising places, with poems by 20 luminous poets. Acclaimed illustrator Jamey Christoph brings the words to light and life in painterly digital images, a project that was more than a year in the making, according to his website. 

 

It's a perfect volume for Spring, for Poetry Month, and for wonder-seekers at any time of year.  There are many thoughtful blog posts celebrating this new anthology, and the book cast its colorful glow on Jama's Alphabet Soup just last Friday.  Matt happened to be the host for last week's Poetry Friday Roundup, and his post offers a beautiful tribute to Lee Bennett Hopkins, to whom the book is dedicated.  You'll also find a list of posts celebrating the anthology's launch, so you can go rainbow hopping! Of course, the best rainbow hopping happens in the book - from a cave in Patagonia to a mountain range in China to a star nursery in our galaxy to a collection of crystals in a window sill - maybe yours?

 

The Rainbow Keeper

 

by Irene Latham

 

There's a girl who loves brilliant things:

crystals, gemstones, diamond rings.

She digs them up, wipes them clean.

She asks them: what wonders have you seen?

She marvels at their varied colors -- 

periwinkle, lime, cyan, butter.

She sings to them of geometry, of heat.

She displays them on her bedroom window seat.

Crystals are her favorite find -- 

especially the broken kind.

Their way of speaking is to glimmer,

shimmer, SHINE!

How do they make their tiny rainbows?

only the Rainbow Keeper knows.

 

©Irene Latham.   Used with permission.

 

 

And if you've never made it to Colombia (I haven't), you can travel to a colorful river there:

 

 

Caño Cristales

 

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

 

I'm a river in a rainbow.

I'm a rainbow in a river.

I ran away from Paradise.

(Or so do some believe.)

 

I glow in red and golden hues

but half the year I'm greens and blues.

I am a simple river

with a secret up my sleeve.

 

Color!

 

Today I'm rainbow poured in water.

Soon again I will be plain

magnificent and ordinary

as I carry crystal rain.

 

We each are much more than we seem.

Allow yourself, my child, to dream.

 

 

©Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Used with permission.

 

 

Each poem (several of which shine through particular poetic forms!) is presented with an unobtrusive, reader-friendly scientific sidebar.  At the end of the book, you'll find resources for every rainbow included as well as a glossary.

 

Thank you to Eerdmans Books for Young Readers for sending me a copy of this shimmering book! And thanks to Irene Latham and Amy Ludwig VanDerwater for allowing me to share their poems.  And of course, thanks to Matt Forrest Essenwine for bringing all these colors out of his his imagination and into these fine poems!

 

Speaking of Irene, rainbow-hop over to Live Your Poem for this week's Roundup.  Remember to follow the Kidlit Progressive Poem (see last week's post) and visit Jama's Alphabet Soup again for a Roundup of all-things-Poetry-Month in the Kidlitosphere. 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers, and Happy National Poetry Month! (& Happy Poetry Friday if you're here Friday!)

 

I'm delighted to have our annual Kidlit Progressive Poem park here for Day Three. The Progressive Poem was launched several years ago by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem and is now tended by Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche.  It always brings surprises. 

 

For this year's offering, Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise wrote the first *perfect*  line, and Tricia Stohr-Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect handed me a delicious second line.  My addition is the third line in bold. A few comments about it are below the month's schedule.

 

 

Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air

stippling every dogwood

 

 

(Take it away, Donna, at Mainely Write!)

 

Here's the month's lineup. (Please excuse my lack of hyperlinks, but my website doesn't do those without my manually putting in each one, and I've got a deadline this week! Link to active links is below the list.)

 

April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 6 Buffy Silverman
April 7 Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 10 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainely Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita Davis
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There's no such thing as a Godforsaken town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

 

Here is the sign-up page at Margaret's blog with all the links.

 

 

Why dogwoods in my line? Because they've been delighting me for the past week or so here in upstate South Carolina!  I did make sure their range includes Maine, so I wasn't tossing a unfamiliar image to Donna.  And I wasn't really trying to turn my back on those of you west of the Mississippi; I just wanted to include a specific detail. 

 

I tried to generally echo the syllables/rhythm of the first line, and chose "stippling" to add another "p" sound to those in "Open," "April," and "paint." Now Donna can decide whether to make a rhyme and a traditional four-line stanza - or NOT!  I love that each poet can make her/his own path turning the poem. 

 

In case you saw my post last week, I'll add that I was particularly struck by "let sunlight paint the air" because we've all been hyper-focused on the air here in upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina in the past couple of weeks because of wildfires.  (Our house is about 7-8 miles from one of them.) Depending on which way the wind blew, we had oppressive smoke or clear-ish skies.  But last weekend, things improved. (Except that we sent all our smoke across the line to North Carolina for a couple of days - sorry!) Federal help arrived a week or so ago and brought big equipment and more folks, and then we had RAIN on Sunday and Monday.  The containment percentages for all these fires went up slowly over the week (in the 90s as I type this early Thursday), residents have been allowed to return to their homes, and burn bans have been lifted.  The acreage burned in the Table Rock Complex fires totaled more than 15,000, making it the largest fire in Upstate South Carolina history. 

 

If you're still reading this, and you're reading on Friday, be sure to visit oh-so-busy Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme for this week's Poetry Friday Roundup.  And be sure to check our generous Jama's roundup of poetry events for April in the kidlitosphere at Jama's Alphabet Soup. 

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! As I write this on Thursday evening, it's been a bit of a surreal day.  March 27 marks the 6-month anniversary of Helene slamming into this region, causing most of the storm's 248 deaths (across six states) and much of the $78 billion dollars in damages.  Maybe you saw Good Morning America broadcasting from Asheville Thursday morning. 

 

We were hit by the storm here in northern South Carolina, but our family was all okay, and our house was spared.  We lost dozens of trees, and there is a view of a little ridge where we once saw only woods.  Despite having massive mounds of tree debris removed from our long driveway, the wooded areas of our property are still full of fallen and leaning (and extremely dry) trees. It's that way everywhere in upstate South Carolina and in Western North Carolina.  It's estimated that Helene damaged 210,000 acres of forest in South Carolina, and more than 800,000 in North Carolina. 

 

Which brings us to this week, and the fires you've probably seen in the news. The ones in NC are massive (attributed to downed power lines), but they are starting to get some containment over there.  The fires near us in SC - The Table Rock Complex Fire -  are still at zero percent containment, and fire fighters and other personnel have been working valiantly in difficult conditions, doing much by hand.  Downed trees from Helene have prevented getting in big equipment on the ground.  The largest fire was started by negligence (teenagers smoking). [Friday update:  The Table Rock Complex Fire is now well over 10,000 acres taken together, the largest ever in the Upstate.  But federal resources are here now, too, so that's good. And on a personal note, the wind is not pushing it our direction today.]

 

Table Rock is a special place for my hubby and me, as he proposed up there when we were seniors at Furman!  Year before last, to mark the 40th anniversary of that occasion, we hiked it once again.  This time, we went all the way to the top!  (It's about 3 1/2 miles UP - so, 7 miles total and challenging with rock faces.  I was proud of us.) While there, we could see evidence from a large wildfire from 2016.

 

We now live about 15 miles from Table Rock as the crow flies, 20 to drive.  Turns out we're even closer to the other fire, the Persimmon Ridge Fire. It's about 7 miles away as the crow flies, and we're maybe 5 miles from the evacuated area for that one. My neighbors and I have been nervous as this week has unfolded, as winds have been fierce and humidity levels have been dangerously low.  I've been concerned that even if the big fires stay where they are, it wouldn't take a lot for any kind of fire to ignite the tinder we all have around us. 

 

Friday should bring a slight rise in humidity levels, but still Red Flag Warnings, and Sunday is supposed to bring oh-so-welcome rain. After a few days of off-and-on oppressive smoke (and even some falling ash), we are all ready for some improvement. I did photograph our whole house and contents, and we've got "go bags," and I've got the photo albums gathered, though we really should be fine this far down.

 

On Tuesday morning, I walked less than a mile from our house and snapped the top two pictures from my phone (zoomed in).  The bottom picture is at the same spot on Wednesday, at sunset, from my car.

 

I wanted to share something mountain-themed for today, and I hope you'll excuse me if I needed something light-hearted.

 

I found this little gem in the Home and School Reciter and Entertainer by The Rev. Henry Davenport Northrop (Philadelphia, National Publishing Company, 1904).

 

 

 

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL

 

 

The mountain and the squirrel

      Had a quarrel,

      And the former called the latter "little prig;"

    Bun replied: --

  "You are doubtless very big,

 

  "But all sorts of things and weather

    Must be taken in together

    To make up a year

    And a sphere;

 

   "And I think it no disgrace

     To occupy my place.

     If I am not as large as you,

     You are not so small as I.

     And not half so spry.

 

   "I'll not deny you make

         A very pretty squirrel track;

     Talents differ; all are well and wisely put.

        If I cannot carry forests on my back.

     Neither can you crack a nut."

 

 

The talented and generous Marcie Flinchum Atkins has our Roundup this week.  Thanks, Marcie!

Can you believe Poetry Month starts next week??!  I've got next Thursday's line in the Progressive Poem!