Catalog Poem

We recently did a teacher in-service day. The focus was integrating the arts with our curriculum. Now, this is something I love to do whenever I find a way. I love being able to bring music into the classroom to help me teach writing or social studies. We did an activity that was designed for a 5th grade classroom about immigration and the result was a catalog poem. We assumed that we each were the person on our slip of paper, we had to find our family (other teachers who had last names that matched yours) and then create this poem about what you would pack in a trunk on your journey into the U.S. based on the information given on each slip. My family was from Russia and they were Jewish. The father was a goldsmith and he had three daughters and one son, as well as a wife and mother-in-law. My group was great with coming up with items for me to write about and then I took over the writing part (for which they were thankful and I was perfectly content doing). Here is our result:


A cast iron pot, midnight and rough hewn
Smelling like coal
Copper scales that clank in the day
as father carefully places the brass weights
Cold, dull shine
into the bottom of the trunk.
Mother carefully wraps the hand painted china tea pot-
a flush of pink flowers on bone
The years of training and grandmother painted it herself.
She adds the quilt made from the children's clothing
we could no longer patch,
It smells of vanilla, cloves, basil-
all the spices we will tote with us.
Reverently we pass the Torah hand to hand
Each pausing before it is wrapped in the quilt.
A click clack of knitting needles
Mother always has yarn on hand;
Father takes his ax- it's blade scarred from rough
Russian winters.
Brother's knife, although he hopes for a hatchet soon
When we arrive in the New World.
Sewing kits for the girls- thread in various shades
of charcoal and black;
Perhaps they'll make a living from this.
Right on top the doll passed from grandmother
To mother, sister to sister- its pained face crumbling.
We close the trunk with a creak and a sigh,
America will be full of new possibilities.