This was our first year participating in Monkeyshine season and we are so grateful for everyone who participated. We invested a lot of time into this project by designing our own stickers and researching Puyallup and Tacoma history then creating poems based on those locations. It took a lot of creativity!
Monkeyshine season is a chance to bring the community together, to go on a nice walk with your loved ones, clean up trash and overall share the appreciation of our beautiful lands and the spaces we get to call home.
Since our project is officially over, we would like to share the answers to our poems with you:
(Welcome Figure TAM)
Before you enter, a figure stands tall,
Welcoming many, remembering all.
First Peoples honored in form and hue,
Earth-red healing and strength shine through.
(Totem Poles Ruston Way)
Carved in wood, the stories rise,
Through seasons, spirits, watchful eyes.
Between Woven walls and planes that fly,
The river hums with legends nigh.
(UW Tacoma)
Among the buildings where minds expand,
And water once rested before this land,
Aluminum waves trace lifelines past,
Where the Fish stand still, and brains move fast.
(Tacoma Narrows Bridge)
Where waters twist and structures sway,
A crossing learned to move, not stay.
An eight-armed lesson from tide and sea,
That strength survives through adaptability.
(Point Defiance Park)
Grasses run green beside the tigers roar,
Alligator comes in many forms.
Salty air drifts in from shore,
A taste of community, now no more.
(Firemans Park)
Once it towered, reaching high,
A carved figure that caught the eye.
But its story was not theirs to tell,
Only a shadow of culture it tried to sell.
(Wright Park)
Six hundred trees, a hundred forty-five ways,
A century of visitors wandered these days.
An open space where all could roam,
Among the trees, the park feels home.
(Point Ruston)
Where wind shapes hills beside the Sound,
A distant world was first unbound.
Sand and sea inspired the scene,
Its story now plays where films are screened.
(Stadium High School)
I hate the towers scraping high
I hate the spires against the sky
But most of all, I hate it, see
You can’t take your eyes off me.
