Moving Words 2000 Student Poems

The student poems below have been chosen to be displayed on Arlington Metrobuses from January - March, 2000.

CUCKOO BIRD

Cuckoo bird sings like the buzzing of a bee.
Cuckoo bird sings up in a tree.
Cuckoo bird has eggs of his own.
When they grow up and fly away,
cuckoo bird is all alone.

Rachel Locke, 1st Grade
Tuckahoe Elementary School

1863

In eighteen hundred and sixty three,
General Meade fought General Lee.
They battled for three days and two nights.
Gettysburg knew the bloodiest sights.
When Pickett charged the Union to kill,
He couldn’t make the crest of the hill.
Confederates stumbled in retreat.
Some wore shoes taken from Union feet.

Hobart Reynolds, 3rd Grade
Arlington Science Focus School

I WISH

I wish…I was an engineer
With my mind and my hands
I could design new lands
Where people pay no taxes
And no one is allowed to use faxes.
Face to face, hand in hand
Will be the motto of my new land.

Muzzamil Aijaz, 4th Grade
Claremont Elementary School

WINTER

I wake up this morning
to find snow on the ground.
Not much, just a few sprinkles
like powdered sugar on cornbread.
I slipped on my moccasins
and my warm wool coat and went
outside by the icy pond.
I sat on a rock and watched
Old Man Winter do his work.

Samantha Edington, 4th Grade
Nottingham Elementary School

UNDERWATER THOUGHTS

The sun underwater
makes chains of gold
that dance on my skin
as bubbles bloom
and the pool is a room
I can swim in

Haley McKey, 5th Grade
Glebe Elementary School

A GENERATION

endlessly poking silver studs
into appendages orifices lobes
our bodies will grow around
almost anything patiently
allowing us acupuncture
tattoos metal bolts messages carvings
it is too easy to forget that
we belong to them
that even forgetting
is of the body

Maia McAleavey, 12th Grade
Yorktown High School

The student poems below have been chosen to be displayed on Arlington Metrobuses from October-December, 2000.

THE FIELD OF WONDER

The golden grass spreads for miles and miles.
The wheat’s stacked up neatly in piles and piles.
Bees sting my feet as I wander around.
But why should I care?
It’s just me and my hound.

The wind pulls back on my golden brown hair.
A cub runs past with his mother bear.
This field of wonder is just in my dream.
Really I’m just by the junkyard stream.

Miranda Webster
Grade 3, Jamestown Elementary School

THE ANGEL

There was my aunt outside
barefoot on the green grass.
In front of the sunrise
she looked like an angel.
She was singing while she picked flowers,
a multitude of words flying up to the sky.

Jennifer Park
Grade 4, Abingdon Elementary School

DRYING UP

Leaves are the best way
To describe my grandma’s hands.
They dry up
And get many wrinkles in the winter.
And then they become moist
And smooth in the summer.

Blaire Buergler
Grade 7, Kenmore Middle School

PEACE STREET

Light song went
take time sister
Peace Tree Street told his
imagination,
some were cats going
as pet box wolves,
a pig is like the laugh
of a dog.
A soft song went,
stop, walk, and listen,
the wind truly went together.

Angelique Earley
Grade 5, Abingdon Elementary School

BEIRUT WEDDING AMONG THE RUBBLE

The ugly city’s violent street shooting has destroyed our childhood,
The place where you and I grew up once upon a time.
Is this sight of destruction what our future holds?
As we are standing here trying to run away
From the ashes of our childhood that has gone away.

Gothami Gunasekera
Grade 8, Swanson Middle School

INSIDE MY BACKPACK

It’s a whole new world in there
A ten ton weight, a big armchair
A circus elephant for show
A flock of geese, I wish they’d go.
My backpack is a taunting cliff
And on top of that, a large man named Biff
You wouldn’t like to hold my pack
It’s a rumbling, bumbling, humungous sack.

Thomas Norris
Grade 8, Kenmore Middle School