Miracles ~ #sol17

I believe being a writer is one of the biggest gifts you can give to your students. ~ Stacey Shubitz

This month I am participating in the Slice of Life Story Challenge.  Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for creating a space for me to share my corner of the world.

  

It's also Poetry Friday, and Robin Hood Black has the roundup today at Life on the Deckle Edge.

No shamrocks, no leprechauns, not even any green today.  

Instead, I chose to think about the small things in life, the things we sometimes may take for granted.  It may be that we live in such a hurried world, and we forget to stop and pause and wonder.  Or it may be that things have become too ordinary.

When I return from Spring Break, I will introduce my students to "Miracles" by Walt Whitman.  This poem, with its list of miracles, helps me to remember that my world is made up of the little things, the little miracles

in the every day, 

in the ordinary.

I hope you take some time this weekend to answer Whitman's question:  "What stranger miracles are there?"  I may just answer him in my own little poem as a slice this week.

Miracles

Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the
        water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
        with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
        forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
        quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
        same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?