Out My Window in Poetry and Picture

Here is what I hope will be a delightful slice of Taiwan.

A hidden path takes us down the hill by our Tamsui home.

As to the poetry, I wanted the kids to get some learning work done. I wanted them to take a moment to remember Taiwan. I wanted them to work on being more descriptive in their writing (ie: less "it was fun" or "we saw some stuff") so I asked Eloise to tell me 20 things she could see out our window. She and I worked it into a poem.

Here's the little cutie taking in another view. We didn't see the accident, which I assume happened to a parked scooter. We came across this walking down to the MRT. ANYWAY, with Eloise's list, I challenged us all to use more words to paint a picture. Here are the works of her sibs.

The night view as you continue up another hidden path which winds up from our home.

Here are the big three walking to ballet class taught by mom in the studio of a neighboring community.

Back to poetry, I liked the works of the kids so much, I created one of my own. Enjoy!

An aging shack nestled in the jungle and in the shadow 
of the high-rises. Q and Kai saw a 
big screen TV delivered here. Civilization has arrived!

Out My Window, by Steffanie:

A silky, muddy river slides by, but far enough away I can’t make out it’s voice.

Or what it might have said is drowned in the hum of busy, swarming, buzzing scooters

Yet even their voices are soft and only a stray worker bee or two makes his way up our hill on a muggy afternoon to pester my ear with his whine.

From the top of a good-hike of a hill, a rippling stream of treetops try to find their way to the river’s edge but keep getting dammed by buildings blocking their way,

Blocking my view.

Above the trees, roofs of houses, like plateaus of productivity, terrace the jungle and abruptly punctuate homes stacked room on room, story on story.

And

Marking a straighter path than the tangled streets below, the power lines stretch up the distant hill against the down flow of the trees, illuminating and civilizing the gnarled jungle.

A grown-man sandbox heralds another building’s arrival

It’s littered with with tools - power-toys - and heaps of metal resting, lying down before they are permanently laddered to the sky.

Another building has already risen in it’s cage of scaffolding and net,

Waiting like a bride to be made beautiful before the veil is pulled back,

Hiding now it’s concrete countenance.

And above it all, like a benevolent father, a crane elevates with sweeping arm the stuff of the earth, and finds it a new home a little nearer to heaven.

Our buildings from the hill behind them.