We Run

I had my poet friend in for his 5th annual visit with my classes today. The activity he led us through was a fitting end to the National Poetry month challenge we just finished on Tuesday. He had the kids up and moving around, finding and re-finding their "tribes," and then did a fun writing exercise based on Tim Seible's poem Renegade. The poem repeats the words we run, we run like... and is a very accessible model for writers to experiment with. The lesson was good enough to repeat with writing club this afternoon.

Here is a collaborative poem composed of some of the images we came up with through out the day:

we run
we run like the moon escaping the sun
like a bloody nose
like deserts to water
we run like a murderer escaping the police
like dust into the vacuum
we run like this poem goes on
like echoes in a cave
like a home-run ball over the wall
we run like yesterday is tomorrow
like the words you didn't mean to say
like rain on water
we run
we run like cleats on the turf
like cockroaches in the kitchen light
like a cat chasing a laser pointer
we run
we run like we are both chasing and escaping something
we run like the caboose after the train
we run like ghost crabs in the moonlight
we run
we run like we are late for the bus
run like it's the last day of school
we hear the bell and we run