Wendy Mnookin: Writing poems on zoom with my grandchildren

 

Lucy prefers cardboard

and crayons, scissors and glue—

she loves decorating a Poetry Box—

but she’s not so crazy

about writing. She makes faces

at the screen, adds emojis,

while I explain an ode is a poem

of praise. Pablo Neruda

wrote an ode to tomatoes!

He wrote an ode to bicycles!

OK, OK, she says,

pasting a smile on the screen.

She’ll write about Crossing Night—

At Crossing Night

we stopped cars

so salamanders

could cross the road.

She taps her pencil.

It was raining.

She taps her pencil.

Now can I draw a picture?

Max yawns into the screen,

insists he’s not tired.

Bored, maybe.

Something you love, I say.

Baseball? Minecraft? Star Wars?

He gives a sigh.

Blue, he says. The old dog

who’s going blind and deaf.

Sometimes when I lie down

next to her to scratch her ears

she doesn’t know it’s me.

Max looks into the corner of the screen

as if the next words might appear there.

Sometimes she growls.

He rocks a little in his chair.

I have to learn to be careful.

Eliza starts in so quickly

I wonder if she’s heard me.

You’re writing an ode? I say.

She nods. What are you praising?

She holds the poem out to me.

Antibodies.