Orel Protopopescu

Please fill out the form below to send me a message. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on the Facebook page for A Word's a Bird, my bilingual poetry app (English/​French) with animated watercolors by Jeanne B. de Sainte Marie:

Model Poems

I read model student poems to inspire my students. I have high expectations and the children never fail to astonish me. They have poetry in them. My job is just to create the right soil and conditions where it can grow. You can read other poems by my students scattered throughout this website. Here's one of my favorites, inspired by my poetry app, A Word's a Bird (see link below the poem). It was written by a 6th grade girl, a native speaker of Spanish, during my workshop at her school:

My Shell

I’m the caterpillar waiting to become,
waiting under a shell of peace and sorrow.
Seeing the light from my small winter prison
high on the barren tree,
I wait for the sun’s gentle hand to wake me.

I hear the sad lonely melody
of the moon’s violin playing every night,
as if her heart was broken by the darkness
of the small river’s troubles.

Yet I wait with the hope that the storm will pass
and that the sky will shine like the phoenix’s golden feathers.
But all I see is a cloud of the earth’s hopeless melancholy.

Ah! Then I see the ocean’s shiny leaves,
and the spring’s rose has bloomed.
Now the sun has returned, I’m free from my prison.
I’m now the butterfly of happiness.

-- Montserrat Deolarte, grade 6, Marymount School, Paris, France