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Summer Triptych – For the Teachers
I.
Freedom is the classroom door closed and locked.
Shelves are covered with craft paper,
desk drawers are perhaps organized
or else abandoned in clutter.
It can all
wait.
II.
A black swallowtail dips
to the dill
time shifts
from calendar and clock
to caterpillar and bloom.
III.
Chicory appears
along roadsides and railroads:
blue brackets
that begin and end
this season of necessary
loosening.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2026
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The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to use Louise Ireland’s august triptych as our mentor poem. I studied her flow carefully. In her part one, she captured a feeling on the brink of summer’s end. In her part two, she had a concrete example from nature. And in her part three, she had another concrete example and her big lesson. I borrowed Ireland’s lead, “Freedom is…” but I wrote for all teachers, remembering well that feeling of walking away from the months of structured routines with no time for myself and into the breathing room of summer.
Next month we’ll be writing Pádraig Ó Tuama-inspired pantoums. He regularly offers a pantoum challenge on his Substack, with different prompts for each of the lines. We’re using this prompt, from January. Lots of you have written Pádraig Pantoums. We hope you’ll join us for another on the last Friday of July.
Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Two other Poetry Sisters are with us this week:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
A(nother) Year of Reading 
I really love this, especially
“time shifts
from calendar and clock
to caterpillar and bloom.”
I’m sorry to have missed the meeting Sunday, but I’m going to enjoy being surprised by everyone’s poems.
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This is so lovely, Mary Lee. I love every line, but the door is “closed and locked” is especially significant, and I am ready for “this season of necessary loosening.”
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I remember well that feeling of packing up the classroom. As an itinerant teacher, I often had to move to a new room and I remember a colleague commenting on all the books I had. I love how this poem offers three different vantage points for summer. “Necessary loosening” is spot on!
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Lovely transition from classroom to nature and “ this season of necessary/loosening” Even though I continue to teach year round, summer always seems to say slow down and breathe me in… thanks Mary Lee!
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Mary Lee, I am amazed by the poem you brought together in 3 threes. Your primary thought, freedom, holds a message throughout. Ending with “this season of necessary/loosening, is a beautiful way to close the poem. Since I did not know what a triptych, I started the process, had to set it down, and now I am still struggling. My attempt will be a loose draft.
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NECESSARY loosening – so true. I adore chicory, and that is such a gorgeous picture. I was just doing a study on how the idea of coziness works (in reference to the Hallmark film phenomenon, but stay with me here) and it talks about the shift from temporal to seasonal time. Successful films often have a “ticking clock” component – the main character has to do X by Y or else there will be no Christmas or whatnot. There’s “big city” workday time, which is driving towards something, but cozy time, the distilled time found in Hallmark-land, is seasonal, led and not driven, a joyful bustle producing joyful results and not slaved to a deadline. That was a kind of “mind blown” moment… which you’ve recaptured in shifting from clock and calendar to caterpillars and blooms. LOVELY.
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I’m also a fan of necessary loosening…especially how it’s all set up with “it can all/ wait.”
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The chicory caught my attention, but the “necessary loosening” made me glad I stopped by.
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