The grade three students were excited when they learned that their teacher is an artist. I’m happy that they think that there is something fascinating about the act of making things. I like their curiosity about art. I showed them this image.
After asking the students to answer the questions, What do you see? What do you notice? How does the painting make you feel? they wrote acrostic elephant poems.
E
L
E
P
H
A
N
T
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of some of the heart-felt poetry that they shared, but they were very well done.
The Elephant
How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel
that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.
Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion,
once I was not the elephant I find I am.
My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched
trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was
somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness
and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me
to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it
in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind
I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man
of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers
breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments
with balance, the high-wire act and cones.
We elephants are images of humility, as when we
undertake our melancholy migrations to die.
Did you know, though, that elephants were taught
to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?
Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,
tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer.
These kids were bl;essed and willl only know it when they are teens!!!