I invite you today to find a seventh book anywhere and join me in a fun discovery.
Process
Find the 7th book on a shelf or pile wherever you are, in a library, a bookshop, at home or school (any genre).
Turn to page 7.
Read the seventh line.
Let that line inspire a 7-line poem. The line can become part of your poem, or just a muse.
I looked to the seventh shelf, seventh book from the left, and plucked Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster from the bookcase. The seventh sentence: Even when the mortgage reared its ugly head, we never regretted it and now it is fine to know everything is paid for, our forty acres – although how can man own God’s earth? – and the 1690 farmhouse, and the barn, even the pond, and presumably that cricket chirping endlessly on the hearth is also ours.
I chose a tanka for today and can split the last two lines into two more if I decide on having 7.
Merely Caretakers
how can man own God’s
earth? impossible, for we’re
merely caretakers!
and let’s be real ~ we pretty
much suck at that simple task….
For more information on Gladys Taber and her cozy books, check out A Reader’s Almanac with Celeste on YouTube and search for Gladys Taber’s Cozy Seasonal Books episode. I tried to embed the link here, but sharing has been prohibited by the owner of the channel. Gladys Taber’s books are like stepping into a painting by Currier and Ives and living there for a little while in the days before the world went sour.
Matt Forrest Esenwine is a New Hampshire-based author of a dozen children’s books and our host today for the third day of the October 2026 Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can visit the website and click on Open Write to read his full prompt.
Matt shares his process here:
Here’s all you do: pick an object, any object (most boring object ever – or not!), and begin thinking of ways to describe it. Once you have your list, scan through it and see what words/images/feelings you are drawn to. That’s your basis for your poem.
I’ve been decoupaging candles with pressed wildflowers lately – something my mother taught me how to do, and it keeps her memory close. I decided to write a haiku about the ones I have created. While I’ve been creating some flameless ones for my grandchildren from their birth month flowers to use as nightlights, I think smaller ones placed as seating card holders at a wedding reception would be a lovely wedding favor for guests to take home after gracing the tables with light during the gathering. They look wildly romantic, and the ones with faint pink take my breath away.
Joel shares, “My studies taught me that many poetic forms winnow down in length as they ramp up in meaning. A sonnet’s couplet, a sestina’s envoi, a haiku’s closing pivot, a villanelle’s quatrain – you get the idea & the impact: As the form gets smaller, the idea feels more potent, more provocative. There are exceptions. Exceptions like the cherita.”
I love narrative poems, and Garza reminds us that these are, essentially, stories in poetic form. He explains the process:
Remember that the cherita is a story. Aim for a tale that you need to tell (or maybe a tale that you’ve never told). Be as direct as possible in welcoming your reader – one line only.
As you develop the story, be deliberate and succinct. Two lines only for this middle stanza.
Finally, resolve with a comparatively expansive meditation on the meaning or mystery of this story. Knock yourself out — A whole three lines!
One line. Two lines. Then, three lines.
Jay
I looked to the directions, but I only needed the final stanza to tell my story. So I followed my gut and wrote what was inside.
Today is the first day of the October 2026 Open Write at Ethicalela, and Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host. You can read her full prompt here as she inspires us to write about letter grades in education.
What A Grade Can’t Show
a grade can’t show all that they know
those boxed-in letters produce learning fretters
we’re labeling and lumping praising and dumping
and when grades are the game learning’s not the same
learners and scholars wear different collars
there’s no motivation at most learning stations
we’re the ones who need learning on tides that need turning
….and now, let’s be real: AI’s at the wheel…..
This strange shape in the sky yesterday morning had us wondering shortly before 7 a.m. what was happening ~ whether we’d had an alien invasion or were under chemical warfare or something. Turns out, it was the launch of Space X that occurred at 6:33 a.m., and our view at 6:50 looked a lot like a Japanese Koi fish just above the tree line in the southeastern sky. My husband had taken the dogs out and came to get me to come quickly and see the phenomenon. I grabbed my phone so I could take pictures and headed out into the balmy temperatures to check it out.
A quick search online told us we were safe, and we carried on with our day.
A beautiful thing about The Stafford Challenge is the monthly writing workshops that are part of the program. Last night, I got to attend one with C. Marie Furhman as the leader, and she shared some of the craft moves used by Joy Harjo as part of the workshop she led.
We wrote a letter to a living being that has made a difference in our lives (i.e. my new rescue Schnauzer, Jay), and then listed 15 beings that were random, with their actions (i.e. a scared bunny that crosses the driveway and darts into the woods to avoid the circling hawks). Then, we changed the Dear in the letter to the word Remember, used repetition, and brought in the parallels to the random beings. The idea behind this craft move is to give universality to specificity. Here is what I wrote:
To Jay
Remember, people just suck sometimes.
Remember, you were giving the big dogs hell, charging the fence at the dog park when I first met you.
Would you do this to the coyote who prowls the farm?
Remember, the people who surrendered you had their own challenges.
I’m glad we found each other.
Remember, you came home and licked my hand, flitting about the yard
with the butterfly on the hummingbird feeder, wallowing in the grass on
your back.
And now, you breathe in deep sleep next to me,
unlike the scared bunny crossing the driveway.
You’re safe now,
no longer vulnerable.
You belong with me.
You can still sign up for the Poetry As a Healing Art series, even if you are not part of The Stafford Challenge 2026 Cohort. These are free, but each of the 3 sessions requires its own registration.
The weekend wasn’t without rain (4 inches, according to our rain gauge) from the hurricane here in middle Georgia, but by Sunday afternoon, the temperatures were too pleasant to stay indoors. I brought my paints outside and enjoyed some time sitting on the porch. It was a wonderful time to get a jump start on painting some postcards for next month’s poetry exchange. Some weekends are largely unproductive in terms of getting things done that need to be done. This was one of those.
I used to love making pressed flowers for bookmarks and decoupaging plain white candles and decorative soaps when I was younger. My mother taught me how to take newspaper and fold it to match the pages of a heavy book and use that as a press. About six weeks later, we’d use tweezers to take the petals and stems and arrange them over a flat surface using Mod Podge. I think our hobby started back in the day when women carried hexagon-shaped wooden purses decoupaged in collage, with tortoise-shelled handles. Macrame purses were all the rage at that time too. As I was looking for some photos of the ones I’d possibly blogged about before, I did a quick search and discovered I had created a list of 50 things I planned to do in retirement from November 2024, and pressing wildflowers was one of them. How did I forget that list? Check it out here. The dream hasn’t changed much!
During the middle of last week, I called my sister in law to see about coming to get some zinnia clippings from her wildflower beds to press between old newspapers. Off I went, clippers in hand, and came home and pressed a paper sack full of greenery and flower petals I’d collected. In 2008, I participated in a teachers’ study along scientists doing research in the field in South Georgia, and I became the owner of my own plant press and field guide for the plant studies of native species. Still, I use newspaper and not the fancy acid-free white poster-thickness paper that we used throughout that summer in Americus, Georgia at the Jones Ecological Research Center.
For the first time, I’m pressing fresh basil, since a recent bouquet gift had an abundance of this fragrant herb. One thing that never changes: native Georgia ferns are my go-to greenery in any arrangement.
I’m marking my calendar for mid-November to check the plant press and create some decoupaged pillar candles for a Thanksgiving centerpiece. As we have lost mothers over the years, we light candles to remember them on Thanksgiving, and this year I have something other than the plain white tea lights in glass jars in mind. 🙂
Sensei Susan, me, and friend and fellow Mahj enthusiast Christian
I’ve never played pickleball, but I’ve heard that the craze is so fast and furious that new players kidnap all their friends and drive them to the courts, taking extra clothes and gear and even letting complete strangers use whatever equipment they need to join in the game with zero awareness of any rules as they walk onto the court all bewildered. There, they hand them a paddle and explain all about the kitchen and who can go into the kitchen and who should stay out of the kitchen and a hodgepodge of rules that sound like the Charlie Brown teacher to a bunch of head-scratching people who suddenly find themselves in a surreal moment they didn’t choose, pinching their forearms and wondering how they actually got there. And then, these same clueless people now caught up in the madness are the next wave of new players grabbing all their unsuspecting non-pickleball-playing friends the next week and bringing them back for an initiation into the cult sport.
That’s a lot like Mahjong, only with far fewer physical risks of injury for the older folks who do not need additional help finding the ground and suffering injuries. My husband’s father experienced this when he played pickleball and ended up with knee surgery and months of physical therapy. But where crossword puzzles and Sudoku have been the traditional seniors’ choice for cognitive exercise to stave off the inevitable decline of functional brain cells and memory, Mahjong emerged onto the American scene like an Asian tsunami across the globe and up through the cracked-earth dust of history straight outta ancient China and settled in the homes of women who are now going broke buying tablescapes and four-layered theme tiles they store in Michael’s clear lidded candy jars in the china cabinets where their great grandmother’s heirloom dishes used to be displayed. Husbands everywhere are begging: Please, someone, make it make sense! It’s like a CrackDragon tile walked up to the New York Times puzzle page and said, “Hold my beer.”
It’s true. The latest trend in real estate in Texas is the Mahjong room, and if a home doesn’t have one, the wife tells the husband she wants to “look further” for one that does. Because, well, ….the whole group of friends must have a place to play on proper precisely-measured square tables that doesn’t involve a flashmob-style takeover of a Chicken Salad Chick on a random Tuesday at 10 a.m. There are entire YouTube video series sessions that feature how to store mats by rolling or hanging, how to read the official NMJL card, and how to choose tiles based on size to fit your racks and pushers (which are, by the way, sometimes deliberately selected not to be all “matchy-matchy” with the tiles and mat and tablecloth and lamp and dice dish).
And let’s talk about trinkets. Most often they’re tiny ducks or other little pinkytip-sized animals that are collected as trophies upon a Mahjong win that is declared valid with no opposition from the players at the table who have checked the exposed tiles against the card. These ducks are sometimes kept in a little pouch, so when your sensei who taught you to play Mahjong and lives two and a half hours away is preparing to come for an afternoon of games and will “bring her bag of ducks,” you don’t have to read that twice. You understand there is no typo there.
Even more, you understand that what seemed illogical the summer before you learned to play the game now makes perfect sense. It’s gospel, yet it can seem like learning a whole new language in two humorous Mahjong 101 and 102 lessons. It can be deep and carry life lessons, like that scene in Crazy Rich Asians. Even Julia Roberts plays, and insists that the craze is about making order out of chaos because it’s not a gambling game, and it’s not a drinking game. Folks who were complete strangers in the grocery store and bookstore and at church a few months ago suddenly become best friends. These same folks will drive hours to play away an afternoon, and they’ll bring Mahj gear and give it to you as a gift, along with their bag of ducks. They will talk strategy and explain reasons for pivots, and everyone will eat snacks and laugh all afternoon and send each other YouTube videos on game strategies, tips, and obscure rules and, of course, all the things they are putting in their Amazon cart. You’ll understand that while winning is fun, it’s just as much fun to lose because there is no losing where there is so much fun that you don’t even realize your brain is exercising and that you might not be the extreme introvert you once thought you were.
You’ll thank the good Lord you didn’t wait another day to retire, because you look forward to each day you can play with new friends, old friends, and your sister in law across the farm. And you’ll feel sorry for all those pickleball players who think they’re all that and a bag of chips. Because you know the real truth about what a kitchen is for.
Bethany, Christian, and me – photo created by Christian
Our sensei brought these flowers and basil she grew in her own garden when she isn’t mowing grass in straight lines or playing tennis or teaching Mahjong
