"Once More" by #DearOneLBH

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Amy at The Poem Farm for Roundup, where you will find a bevy of posts about and inspired by Lee Bennett Hopkins, whose recent death has sent a white-hot jolt through our community.

I have my own LBH favorites and memories, and I'm so grateful to have known Lee, at least a little. We shared a love for beautiful language and a trust that children can handle (and need!) poems of beauty, wonder, and emotion. Our last email correspondence dated May 31, 2019 was about a quote from  Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling  by Philip Pullman:

"There's fast-food language and there's caviar language; one of the things we adults need to do for children is to introduce them to the pleasures of the subtle and the complex." - Philip Pullman

Yes! Lee and I could certainly agree on that. Lee helped me know that my natural poetic voice does have a place in children's literature. (Not all poetry for kids needs to be light verse/funny!)

Lee's impact on children's literature is profound and inspiring. No doubt he is watching us all from some unseen purple palace (on a cruise ship, maybe? from a box seat at a Broadway show?), scrolling through our posts, eyes sparking with glee over our efforts to help keep his memory and his words warm and breathing.

 One of my favorite LBH anthologies is AMERICA AT WAR: Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Stephen Alcorn. War is a tough topic for anyone, and here there are fifty poems that give voice to the wide array of experiences and emotions associated with war. I've loved this book for a long time.

Here's Lee's poem, about a feeling everyone who's ever lost someone or something knows deeply:

Once More
for C.J.E.

Outside the church
I wait.
Wait for someone
anyone
to invite me
for a longing
Christmas dinner.

No one does.

The cheap hotel room
I'm in
on leave
is dank
dark
grim --
not a trace
of angels
snow
a star-lit tree
a manager
a nativity.

Just a lamp
a bed
a phone
a lonely me.

I slowly open
the small Christmas package
from Mom and Dad
feeling the hands of Mom
deep in my heart
knowing
she wrapped this box.

A pair of socks
a new set of white underwear
a tin of homemade cookies
a surprise comic book
from my treasured collection.

I find the courage
to pick up the phone --
call home.
An awaited conversations begins
continues
ends
with rivers of tears.

The last good-bye
the hardest.

I sit alone
on the edge of the bed
wondering
what
a family
Christmas dinner
must be like.

If only once more.

If
only
once
more.

- Lee Bennett Hopkins

There are many "If only once more"s in my mind when I think of Lee... one of them:

If only once more LBH would tell me I use too many "and"s in my poetry. :)

And now, a little self-promotion, of which I am sure Lee would approve: In case you missed it, earlier this week Penguin Random House coordinated the cover reveal for THE CAT MAN OF ALEPPO, my new (true!) book with Karim Shamsi-Basha, illustrations by Yuko Shimizu coming spring 2020. Please take a look!