1. Poems About Power
Feel Free to Quote!

3. CHOOSE THE single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other. -- Carl Sandburg

4. “Keeping Quiet” by Robert Bly
A friend of mine says that every war Is some violence in childhood coming closer. Those whoppings in the shed weren’t a joke. On the whole, it didn’t turn out well. This has been going on for thousands Of years! It doesn’t change. Something Happened to me, and I can’t tell Anyone, so it will happen to you.

5. First Day of School by Barbara Juster Esbensen
No more barefoot days. My feet are clean, my socks come up to my knees. Inside the school-shoes my toes are stiff and afraid of the dark. The sidewalk is bright with sun and holds the old heat of August in the cracks. We can't feel its rough skin through our soles now and it really doesn't know us anymore.

6. The Balloon Of The Mind
Hands, do what you're bid: Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed.
William Butler Yeats

7. An Interruption by Robert Foote
A boy had stopped his car To save a turtle in the road; I was not far Behind, and slowed, And stopped to watch as he began To shoo it off into the undergrowth— This wild reminder of an ancient past, Lumbering to some Late Triassic bog, Till it was just a rustle in the grass, Till it was gone. I hope I told him with a look As I passed by, How I was glad he'd stopped me there, And what I felt for both Of them, something I took To be a kind of love, And of a troubled thought I had, for man, Of how we ought To let life go on where And when it can.
In your Writer’s Notebook, summarize this poem using four vocab words from our current vocab unit.

8. We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar
     We wear the mask that grins and lies,     It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—     This debt we pay to human guile;     With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,     And mouth with myriad subtleties.
    Why should the world be over-wise,     In counting all our tears and sighs?     Nay, let them only see us, while             We wear the mask.
    We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries     To thee from tortured souls arise.     We sing, but oh the clay is vile     Beneath our feet, and long the mile;     But let the world dream otherwise,             We wear the mask!

9. Boarding House by Ted Kooser
The blind man draws his curtains for the night
and goes to bed, leaving a burning light
above the bathroom mirror. Through the wall,
he hears the deaf man walking down the hall
in his squeaky shoes to see if there’s a light
Under the blind man’s door, and all is right