EB's Responses to "Five Directions to My House" by Juan Felipe Herrera (Poet-to-Poet)

To prepare for National Poetry Month, we have decided to partake in the Poet-to-Poet challenge.  Though the guidelines specifically indicate the challenge is for grades 3-12, we can't miss an opportunity to be inspired.  Rather than enter our poems (since we can't), we will post them here!  More about the challenge here.

Visiting Lake Superior

Elyse Brownell

1. Return, again, to attend the ballet of Heliades across the blue-stained glass floor.
2. Walk along her shoreline, her softness pulled up around your toes as you sink into her body.
3. Feel the openness of her, an endless space, waiting beneath the curve of the Porcupine Mountains.
4. Rest, face her, watch the memories play back on reels of your father's fishing lines: late baths on warm summer nights; a plunge through her shell with the other polar bears; the Northern Lights (she welcomes them new again each time); her vacancy, after the fall, so many times.
5. Leave her as you found her, like an infinite lover you’ll always return to.

Directions to a Memory

Elyse Brownell

1. Return to the playground where someone threw rocks at your brother after he told them to leave you alone.
2. Leave the park, there, your brother, standing still holding another pointed rock in his palm.
3. Reach the top of the hill, just enough to see the boys standing still, like Risk pieces before the war began.
4. See your brother fall, like the wind knocked him over, as sudden as a picture frame falling down.
5. Run down the street, further away from water, though every direction you are standing closer.
6. Enter through the white screen door, calling to your mother, to hurry, to come see, to forget her purse, for now.
   
   
   
   Can We Return?
   Elyse Brownell

1. She is waiting for you on the porch where you stood kissing your first love.
2. Mother, I have come home again, so you can take care of me, if but just for one week.
3. Lover, when I walk these streets I don’t think of you, for the first time, since we met.
4. I am standing near the railroad where we crossed the rails just months before the ink dried.
5. Silver spawn, flock to me, land on a branch, nibble on some berries, I will be there soon.
6. Remember the playground where we were stuck for hours? Remember the tether ball?
7. I still remember the way the icing tasted on my pink ninja turtle cake after the goose hunt.

In response to:

"Five Directions to My House"

Juan Felipe Herrera