When we are children, we are free to just be. Somehow, we lose this being as we mature. We are serious, but it is fun, fantastic, and ordinary things that make a good day.
Peter Everwine reminds me when returning from the fields it is important to remember visible and invisible reminders of what makes a good day. Sometimes, it is barbs, snaggle-teeth, and grinning ones that are easily overlooked. I don’t notice what attached as I ran in the fields. I recall them later as literal and figurative reminders of my adventures.
Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,
looking for God knows what.
Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.
Something to fill an empty spot.
Maybe a luminous angel
or a country girl with a secret dark.
He came back empty-handed,
or so I thought.
Now I find them:
thistles, goatheads,
the barbed weeds
all those with hooks or horns
the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones
those wearing lantern jaws,
old ones in beards, leapers
in silk leggings, the multiple
pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those
with juices and saps
like the fingers of thieves
nation after nation of grasses
that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds
and grab handholds
in whatever lean place.
It’s been a good day.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
I sometimes make it a point to set the kid in me out free. The best way for me are the swings at the park! 🙂
The best time to do that is when we are with our children and, in my case, as a teacher. They are so easily embarrassed. Yet, as they grow up they realize they have to let go sometimes.
AYE-YUP! THAT SURE WAS A KID’S GOOD DAY!!!
It is.
😀
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
FOR A LITTLE BOY….IT SURE WAS! 🙂
Beautiful! We are still free to be, but we tend to qualify a good day according to more complex expectations, rather than just enjoy it.
I agree. We become very serious in living life and end up doing.
Nice one!
Thank you.
You’re welcome.
beautiful prose!
i’d like to think my freedom-loving child still resides, hidden inside
We each have one.
Sounds like a great day for sure. >KB
It is always is.
Smiles…>KB
Reblogged this on The Mirror Obscura and commented:
Here’s how a great day should go. >KB
four years old
~
juicy memories
the fence near the pasture
looking for small wild fruit
~
tiny strawberries
We used to pick saskatoon berries. They are a kind of blue berry. The other thing we did was laid in the backyard out of site (a big backyard) at the edge of the raspberry patch and helped ourselves.
I grew up
in saskatchewan
filling pails
~
enjoying
textural centers
of purple saskatoons
I am never sure where people are from so figure I need to add bits about indigenous plants like saskatoons. We lived in northern Alberta.
Loved the feel of this poem and your comments went along perfectly. I still run in the fields as much as I can, but usually it’s the beach.
I don’t run quite the same anymore, but I walk and, for me, it is the mountains.
Oh, well, my run has always been enough to cause fits of laughter, but still I run. I do more walking these days, especially on the beach. I take a lot of long walks at the base of mountains and hope to walk up a few this summer with my boyfriend.
Reblogged this on From the Sky Above the Mountains and commented:
A simple reminder!
Thank you for the re-blog Matt. It is greatly appreciated.
love this – being out in the fields – I remember that too – can’t remember what we were doing, but it was fun just being out there…
Same with me; I do not remember the exact reasons I was in the fields playing. I only remember that it seemed so worthwhile. We whiled over things of worth without realizing it.
Reblogged this on Catherine Johnson and commented:
Here’s another one I couldn’t resist posting. I love ‘snaggle_toothed’
How wonderful, such joy in the little things. 🙂
There are many small things that bring joy when we pay attention.
Reblogged this on Greatpoetrymhf's Weblog and commented:
A day in nature….wonderfully shared here in”Back from the Fields”
Thank you for the re-blog. It is greatly appreciated.
My pleasure…it was a stand alone moment for me that was filled with the joy of your talent
Thank you for those kind words.
This made me feel like a kid again! descriptions like “barbed weeds” brings it all to life. 🙂
I am sure the plants have names, but we used to call the things that stuck to us burrs. When I saw that term, I was reminded of that word.
Yes! Did you know those little burs were the example the inventor used to create Velcro? I did not like those things since they stuck in my clothes and our dog’s fur. 😀
I did not. My day is completed. I used to tell my students I went home and told my wife I learned something new. They looked at me like I was weird, but came to understand adults learn, as well.
I had forgotten, George de Mestral was his name. I began thinking about him and googled him to read about him again. Have a lovely weekend. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa091297.htm
Yes, even the oldsters have a kid inside begging to come out and play! I let mine out every now and then. 😉
I do too. It makes life so much more interesting.
In many ways, children are much wiser than adults!
Children do not have the built up biases acting.