The Winter Blues - The Chicago Poetry Center

The Winter Blues

I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so sunny and warm for today’s session with Mr. Reinholdt’s 7th graders, but decided it was still a great day for a snowball fight! Inspired by a lesson by fellow CPC teaching artist Fullamusu Bangura I decided to have students write poems about winter where they would also have to incorporate their classmates’ words. Everyone received a few sheets of paper, and after completing a series of short writing prompts, they would crumple it up and put it off to the side. When we finished everyone had an arsenal of snowballs they could launch at each other. After a 30 second “snowball fight” students collected whatever snowballs they could find and used the words on those sheets of paper to write their own poem about winter. Enjoy this week’s poems!

Mr. Reinholdt 7th Grade

The Perfect Winter Axel T.

Ah winter,
The jolliest time of the year
Christmas gifts and grapes with
champagne
Campfires with gingerbread houses
The perfect cup of hot chocolate
tastes like a scorching volcano but then
cools off and tastes like a warm hug
by my mother.
Many time to be jolly and
merry.
But next come January and
February
Valentine’s Day and Groundhog day
the snow starting to melt into
puddles.
With no more coldness, means less
cuddles.
More water coming to the ground. Oh no!
It’s raining.
Out comes March 21st. “Dad, look,
it’s spring.”

Dark Light Juan S.

If I could change anything about winter
it would be the dying trees
The trees look like dead
skeleton bodies
The sun doesn’t come
out for days, or a month.
The boring Christmas
bread makes me wanna cry.
I am so cold in winter, I
would change the weather.
The chocolate chip cookies
make me emotional.
When I play with snow I imagine
to stay active.
The Christmas food
makes me full.
The Christmas tree makes
me think of Santa.
If I had a wish it would be
to have snow ’till summer.