Tag: Triptych

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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}