Poetry in November

Shattered

My dreams
were big,
but I disregarded them all.
I focused
on one
and began to watch it fall.
All I needed to do was catch that star.

I searched,
I studied,
and I ran to catch that star.
I cried,
I pleaded,
I couldn't run that far.
In the end, the dream fell into bits upon the floor.

With pain,
with tears
I slowly picked those pieces up.
With silence
and fears
I scattered them out the door.
My big dream was gone forever.

But then,
one by one
strangers chose the pieces off the ground
with love
and tenderness
they cherished the treasures they had found
until only one was left.

I picked it up to realize it was the dream that would truly make me happy.
~2006

October's Best Books

My daughter and I loved this rhyming little ditty (okay, it's not a song, but it could be) of a book. Quick and easy to read it's simply fun to get through.

Ohhh, my. Cheerio and I found a copy of this book at our local used bookstore and I just couldn't pass it up. I remembered it from my childhood fondly, though I couldn't clearly remember the story line, and it didn't let me down. Cheerio also loves it and wonders "where my little toot, mom?" every time I put it away with the rest of the books.

And for me:

A first person account of an African child's experiences in war as an orphan, a soldier, a rehabilitated young man, and the moments the war caught up to him once again. A shocking horror as any war book will be.

A book set both in the eyes of a slave in southern U.S.A. and a modern day lawyer searching to discover the true painter to a set of famous and valuable paintings.

As someone who has little interest in newspapers and their electronic counterparts, I knew very little about the famous Amanda Knox and the case that surrounds her before picking up this book. I love these tragically real books-questionable guilt, innocent people accused, and police cases gone wrong- so really, this case was right up my alley and if I had had any notion of news at all, I probably would have been glued to the coverage with the rest of the world. I wonder if that would have brought a different outlook to this book?

Hope you all had an adventure-filled month with me!