Teatime Tuesday

I've always meant to participate in Bravewriter's Poetry Teatime Tuesday, and we finally did it today. Tuesdays seem packed usually. The kids like to start working on homework from their co-op classes in the mornings, and then we have German and swimming in the afternoons.

But today we had an unexpected snow day, and everything was canceled. So, we had tea and cookies and poetry.

We read mostly snowy poetry, of course: "Stopping By Woods on a Snow Evening" because it always makes me choke up, every single time I read it. And we also read:
 "White Fields" by James Stephens
"Velvet Shoes" by Elinor Wylie (I love this one so much: "Let us walk in the white snow in a soundless space; with footsteps quiet and slow, at a tranquil pace, under veils of white lace.…")
February Twilight by Sara Teasdale
A Sledding Song by Norman Schlichter

We read some poems about birds because there is just nothing like a pair of red and green cardinals, a flock of blue jays, or a red-headed woodpecker against the snow:
"A Bird" by Emily Dickinson
"Be Like the Bird" by Victor Hugo
"Three Things to Remember" by William Blake
"The Chickadee" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
And one of my absolute favorite poems, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens.

XIII 

It was evening all afternoon. 
It was snowing 
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

And then we had to add in a few cat poems. Poor indoor kitty. She's been positively frantic all day, watching all the birds at the feeder. And so we read

"Poem (as the cat)" by William Carlos Williams

"The Bad Kittens" by Elizabeth Coatsworth

"Hearth" by Peggy Bacon

I'd love to have some more peaceful Tuesdays for poetry reading and tea. I'm envisioning this spot in the spring. But right now, it's a little too chilly out there.