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[ poems by West Carteret High School Students Aurora Goodyear,
Bryana Fessler, Xristos, M., Yaritza Lopez-Castro,
and their science teacher Jessi Waugh ]
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Back Field Ecosystem
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The sun sits high at 8:30,
Warming the dark, quiet soil.
Everything feels just right,
Like the field is slowly waking up.
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A hawk glides across the sky,
Silent but watching everything below.
A butterfly drifts without a path,
While a ladybug crawls, small but bright.
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Leaf litter crunches underfoot,
Pinecones rest, sharp and still.
Green shrubs fill the space with life,
Hiding more than you can see at first.
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Everything here has a place,
From the ground to the open air.
It may not look simple from far away,
But up close, it’s full of life.
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Aurora Goodyear
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❀
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Let us probe the silent places. Let us seek what luck betides us. There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam too. And the Wild is calling, calling – let us go.
— Robert Service, Call of the Wild
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❀ ❀ ❀
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Out in the Sun
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In the sun I lay so bright
Waiting patiently for the night.
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The birds sing
The flowers dance,
Right beside me
Lay the ants
Bringing food,
To their colony below
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And then December comes
The snow, powdery white
Covering the plain
I wonder, do these creatures
Have a name?
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Or are these creatures just
Like me, figuring out where
And who they want to be.
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Bryana Fessler
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❀
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Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden.
— Rachel Carson
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❀ ❀ ❀
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Bees
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They say a bumblebee is incapable of flight.
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Its tiny wings cannot produce enough lift
to fly and its fat body only drags it down.
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Other creatures such as butterflies
and flies have the lift for flight while bees
do not.
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That is because bumblebees defy
the laws of aviation, flying anyways.
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Xristos, M.
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❀
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Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it, so it goes on flying anyway.
— Mary Kay Ash
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❀ ❀ ❀
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The Tree
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The tree – its stature,
its branches –
the purest emerald
of the path –
unveiling its magic
before my eyes.
What a beautiful and sweet song!
The birds of the path
tweet within your heart.
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Yaritza Lopez-Castro
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❀
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Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a song bird will come.
— Chinese proverb
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❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀
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Baby Snapper, West Carteret High School
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Photos by Jessi Waugh
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The World in a Grain of Sand
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These feet have never left North America
have crossed fewer than fifty meridians
they remain on long familiar land
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But the mind travels farther than the body roams
I’ve seen the world in a grain of sand
scanned the beaches of Normandy and Spain
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My co-teacher exchanged local sand
with pen pals via snail mail
assembled an unrivaled collection
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When he shared his horde
I poured each vial into a petri dish
sealed the sides, labeled with location
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Saudi Arabia, bleach white
New Zealand, volcanic black
Dominican Republic, fine as dust
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I have seen Scotland’s weathered highlands
studied stones cast by the gods of Mt. Olympus
sifted silt gleaned from Utah’s red lakes
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These are the Florida Keys
can you feel the sea breeze
see the coral ground to brilliant snow
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For twenty years I’ve yearned
to walk the coast of County Cork
for now, I magnify its mythic grains and dream
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Jessi Waugh
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The back soccer field continues to be a great place for the Biodiversity Lab. This year, we found two baby snapping turtles, a baby alligator, and the salamander in this area. A student returned the snapping turtle to the creek beside the field. Classes are currently designing a sign for this freshwater creek. The winning sign design will be made into a metal sign by a local graphic design company, thanks to a grant.
— Jessi
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❁✾✿
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West Carteret High School is in Morehead City, North Carolina, on the Atlantic coast of the southeastern USA. It is a public 9-12th grade high school, with about 1100 students. Approximately 40% of students are economically disadvantaged. Jessi Waugh teaches Earth and Environmental Science, since 2000 a required course for graduation. She also teaches Biology and Marine Science as needed, and has been a teacher for 14 years. Her students are all 9th & 10th grade, ages 14-16. The poems shared here are from both the honors and standard classes. Jessi holds a Master’s in Teaching Secondary Science and an undergraduate Biology degree and tells me, I like teaching this course and age group; it’s my niche.
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❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀
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Thanks always to my outdoor companion Mike Barnett, who plies me with a continuous treasure of thoughtful quotations about nature, science, wonder, and discovery.
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And Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
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– Bill
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