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An American Sonnet: Knit One, Purl Two

Glenda Funk of Idaho is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the first day of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write Double Consciousness American Sonnets, which are looser forms of the traditional Shakespearean or Petrarchan Sonnet with the Volta, or shift, around line 8 or 9. Come visit the page today and read the poems of others, and perhaps write your own to share!

Hands knitting a multicolored wool sock with wooden needles indoors

Instructions for Knitting a Poem

knit one, purl two, I hook words as I write

cool peace, with shades of panic-level fright

these variegated colors of yarn skein

like phases of moon cycles: wax and wane

crack of thunder harkens a derecho

aftermath: look up and see a rainbow

cast on, bind off ~ weave from all this SABLE

knit one, purl two, count along a cable

change skeins ~ dye lots show unstable jogging

tug trail legs: necessary frogging

sometimes we can’t undo what has been done

new leading legs knit common threads as one

a cozy mitten pair: rich mosaic

poetry can change the dull prosaic

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Journey to Knowing

We’ve all heard it said that love is blind, and I’ve sure been a champion and a victim of that a time or two. But when it comes to our own family members and their relationships, it hits home in deeper ways. Someone I care about has recently broken off a year-and-a-half engagement. I’d had my suspicions about things when the wedding planning never got started and there was a wrinkle or two of bickering for a week or so another time, but I kept praying that things would work out as they should. And they did. The one who said, “I didn’t break it off sooner because I just kept hoping it would all work out” has experienced that rocky road of discovery where we must accept that even love that is blind can still see the truth when it has looked long enough.

Journey to Knowing Another Person

who we see is

who we choose to see

who we want to see

who we believe we see

…but are we ever really right?

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Journey Through Reading

I feel deep gratitude for the seeds of my sprouting love of poetry from an early age. A Child’s Garden of Verses (received as Christmas gifts in both 1971 and 1972) by Robert Louis Stevenson and Childcraft Volume 1 Poems and Rhymes are the books of poetry that made me love poems so much that I hid in my closet with a flashlight to read them. I had a sleeping bag and pillow set up much like a tent or secret fort, and that was my poetry hideout. A cozy nook, away from the noise of the house and the cares of the world.

Here is a Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable pattern) using a selection of words from some of my favorite childhood poems.

Windy Verse

lion-like

usher of the month

windy roars

fiercest storms

step into this poetry~

it’s a real word storm!

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Priorities….or Polarities?

Today, I am writing from a prompt in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. This card asks us to make a list of our priorities – – what pulls us in different directions, and what is our strength and our weakness. And thenI reread it….wait, no, the card says polarities. I first read it as priorities. Let’s give a rhyming hashtag poem a whirl today!

Polarities

#firstthisway

#thenthat

#theydon’tneedme

#…..untiltheydo

#pusheast

#pullwest

#nottheleast

#notthebest

#shove left

#shuffleright

#workallday

#dreamallnight

…..and turn off the alarm and keep dreaming

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Embarking on Retirement: The Next Journey

Retirement

I’ve found the door

started looking last year

made my way through the room

straightening my files

smoothing my skirt

changing shoes

grabbing my hat and sunglasses

moving toward the portal

reaching, turning, pushing

toward the next chapter

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Traveling the Journey


Looking in the Mirror

I look in the mirror

see the gray hair

see the neck wrinkles

see the crow’s feet

see the lazy thyroid laying down on the job

and thank God I’m here to show the wear

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Disney Dads

Back in 1974, we took a vacation to Walt Disney World with another family who were close friends of my parents. At that time, Dad was the pastor of First Baptist Church on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and his friend Joe Fennell was the husband of the organist in our church. Our mothers were close friends. In fact, when I hadn’t had chicken pox by the time they wanted me to have it before I got older, their children got it and our mother arranged for us to go and play with them so that we would contract it. Tiffany, standing third from left in this photo (next to me, the tallest kid in the green shirt) freely shared her germs. I kept a scar right between the eyes well into my teens from a popped pox.

The popcorn cart reminded me of the popped pox as I sort through pictures of travel this month. While I’m not particularly a fan of amusement parks, we made such wonderful memories there even when the Disney parade was nothing but a few characters walking down Main Street without lights and music and all the thrills of a big parade.

Disney, 1974

Popcorn, Pox, Pops

Disney popcorn cart

between-eyes popped chicken pox

posing with two Pops

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Juneau, Alaska

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be on a glacier with all this heat in the Southeastern United States today? We were there several years ago, and we took a helicopter ride to Mendenhall Glacier, where we got to ride with the sled dogs. Fun fact: they pee and poop on the run. Meeting the next generation of Iditarod and other sled racing dogs was a highlight of that trip!

Sled Team

Mendenhall Glacier

riding with the sled team dogs

Alaskan sporting!

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Saguaro Cactus

In February, we traveled out west to visit one of our daughters in Nevada. We saw beautiful deserts with sunset skies in violet purples, tangerine oranges, buttery and vibrant yellows, and deep rose reds. Many of the cactus plants looked as if they were singing praise to their maker. I painted a watercolor picture, but it did not turn out at all, so here is a photo I did not take that shows better what I had tried to capture in color.

Silhouette of a tall cactus with two arms in a desert at sunset with colorful clouds

Holy Hands

Saguaro Cactus

praising purple sunset skies

raising holy hands

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A Light Unto My Path

Today, I’m blessed to host the Spiritual Journey Thursday 2026 for the month of July. Our group was asked to reflect and meditate on this phrase: “a light unto my path.” I invite your reflections and blog posts today as we consider the light that guides our way.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105) serves as a reminder that divine wisdom and scripture act as daily, step-by-step guidance to help navigate the dark or uncertain moments of life.

when we travel deep

dark paths of uncertainty

His Word is the light

One of my favorite helpful resources for when I’m reading God’s Word has always been a concordance. Long before the many online versions of this resource emerged when internet use became more popular, I had a hard copy of a concordance and a study Bible with illuminated footnotes. No matter what popped up in my day or my season, I had a resource to guide me to just the right places in scripture to hear the words my heart needed. Today, there are even alphabetized lists for every topic imaginable, like this one.

In the happiest of times, it feels joyful to praise God for His many blessings. Life goes along without bumps, we go to work, cook dinner, take weekend trips, and meet friends for book club chats. We say morning prayers, “praying folks up” on the way to work like we are building prayer credit in Heaven to remain covering our loved ones even when God calls us home. Yes, I do that.

But in the darkest of times, even in the pit of a world up-ended when all the rubble is still falling, even when we can’t see five feet in front of us or think clearly, scripture and prayer are God’s guiding forces to help steer us through every cavern, every storm, every place of darkness – no matter how hopeless life can seem at times. He is our lantern and our guide. He shows us our blessings even in our struggles.

We pray without ceasing for God’s Word to light our paths forward – on days of joy, and on days of sadness, on days of peace and days of turmoil. He is there, lighting our path.