Month: June 2022

Johnson Funny Farm

mornings of wonder-filled awe

safe sanctuary

pedicured toenails

treat for the start of summer

All Your Dreams Pink Frost 

Growing up a preacher’s kid in the deep south, I learned to always carry a book everywhere I went.  In fact, I may have become an avid reader simply because we’d bump into folks on every family outing and there was plenty of time for me to read while the grownups talked.  My parents knew to come find me somewhere lost in the pages of a book in a nearby quiet space when they finally wrapped it up.  

My childhood of learning to patiently wait prepared me for being married to a county commissioner.  Same life, different books.  People want to talk, and my husband is an agent of creative change, a focused listener, and an innovative problem solver. He can talk the ears off a billy goat along with the best of them.   We don’t go anywhere that people don’t want to bend his ear, and I’m good with that – the extreme extrovert in him is skilled at people-ing in a way that his equally introverted wife is not. 

That’s why a rainy day a few years ago found us meandering through our local bookstore so I could stock up on some waiting material.  It’s a cozy place, right up on the town square, in a historic building with creaky wood floors and giant windows in the front, and just like its big-time successful counterpart cousin bookstores, it beckons customers to its coffee bar. The owners keep those spectacular front windows festively decorated for the seasons, and there’s nothing that warms my heart in autumn more than standing on that front sidewalk looking at the glow of warm light in the windows, with yellow, red, and orange crunchy leaves at my feet.

My favorite place in the whole store is the circle of mismatched sink-down-into-softness chairs in the back by the fireplace.  There’s a large round pillowy ottoman in the middle, where you can drop your purse and throw your feet up with a big stack of books to peruse. If you didn’t know you were in Zebulon, Georgia, you might think you were in some little European village. Those chairs were right where I was headed when I overheard the familiar conversation begin with a woman introducing herself to my husband and sharing her two cents.

Since they were just a couple of aisles over, I could hear the problem she was describing, about the cemetery just two tenths of a mile down the road on the back side of the bookstore, tucked off in acreage that truly has everything that resting in peace could ever offer.  A marbled statue of Jesus is there to bring peace and comfort those who are grieving. 

“We go walking every day in that cemetery.  Every afternoon.  And it’s always the same thing.  Something needs to be done.  There is poop everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  All over the headstones.  These birds.  They’re even pooping on Jeezuz!”  And on and on she went in her dramatic southern drawl.

I fought back tears of laughter, imagining my dear, sweet listener trying to keep a straight face and to assure her that he would do everything in his power to……to……to what?  Meet with the birds, explain the situation, and assign them a designated pooping area?  

I never made it to the sink-down chairs that day.  I paid for my book, staving off laughter, and found my extra car key so I could slip out the back door onto the iron-railed porch and let it all out before dashing through the rain to the car.  

I managed a straight face, though, as if I hadn’t heard a thing when my husband found me reading in the passenger seat.  

Without cracking a hint of a smile, I pretended to keep reading as I mustered a serious voice, feigning frustration, “You know, if you commissioners would get off your asses and do something about the weather in this town, we might could have some sunshine this afternoon.”  

We took a necessary moment to enjoy the best medicine, and off we drove down the back street to the cemetery to check out the newly-registered complaint and talk with Jesus.

Lightning bugs at dusk

Fill the arena, flashing

Pretend cameras

Grade school memories

Barefoot, with cutoff jean shorts

And tie-dyed tank top

deep blue doodle-ties

Plaited Pippi Longstocking

Raises both arms on 

St. Augustine grass

Nature’s Olympic floor mat

For cartwheeling shows

Every passing car 

A Dream of discovery

By a real true judge 

Who’d stop in our yard:

“Be our star gymnast, Kim Haynes!”

Offering flowers

Scandinavian

nasty-tempered Fremont Troll

clutches a plucked bug

lurks underneath the

Aurora Avenue Bridge

iconic sculpture

18 feet tall, with

a Volkswagen hubcap eye~

no parking nearby

Troll-o-ween birthday

he sends a concrete message:

stop development!

I’ll take a trip to 

Caffeinated Seattle

To Pike Place Market

To see fishmongers

Sling silvery salmon and

Dodge snapping monkfish

To see SkyCity,

Spin atop the Space Needle

Climb the Freemont Troll

Ride the monorail

Cross Puget Sound by ferry

Watch the salmon climb

To curl up, relax

At Elliott Bay Bookstore

Feel blood pressure drop

purple unicorns

a smile that lit up a room

field day blue ribbons

Heaven spelled backwards

a mother’s “little shadow”

a TikTok dancer

piggy bank Disney World dreams

smart and loving son

number four jersey

a quinceanera dress

honor roll student

First Communion day

football pass patterns

premonition child

coffee-making note writer

barbecue griller

a budding photographer

CrossFit calluses

detest-dress diva

make-a-difference lawyer

sketching in Heaven

*Post inspired by an article written by Dey, Douglas, Zhang, and Park in The Texas Tribune on May 27, 2022 found here: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-victims/

My blog theme this month is Changing Perspectives. I’m writing from different spaces and viewpoints. When my friend Glenda Funk shared that she would be traveling through Uvalde, Texas on an upcoming trip and offered to post a written tribute at the monument, I wrote this poem and sent it by email for her to print and take with her. Tears well in my heart for those grieving families who have lost their loved ones. Hope fills my heart as I imagine what really happened that day.

A New School 

I’ve often wondered

When horrific things happen

Why God allows it

But we’ll never know

Why they were taken so young

This side of Heaven

I’ve never believed

We die in fear, suffering

But that Jesus comes

In those moments to 

Gather us into His arms

Before we die here

I see His presence

Imagine His bright aura

Stepping into class

“Children, come with me,”

He’d said, before the gunman

Ever opened fire

Souls were already

Safely climbing Heaven’s steps ~

Joy, not fear, was theirs

Twenty one sweet souls

Left their bodies, took His hand

Climbed to pearly gates

Leaving holes in hearts

Of all of those who loved them 

But feeling no pain

I believe Jesus 

Died for us, suffered our death

Comes back to take us

Beautiful angels

Whose learning began anew:

How to Soar with Wings

                   -Kim Haynes Johnson

Acts 2: 26 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest in hope, 27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’

*With gratefulness to Glenda Funk, a fellow writer at www.ethicalela.com, who will this poem at the monument on her way through Uvalde.  May God’s peace comfort the grieving families who have lost their loved ones in this tragedy. 

In the 1970s, I lived on St. Simons Island, Georgia. In the cul-de-sac adjacent to Martin Street, back on King’s Way, we had a tree that we climbed to swing. Someone had nailed long boards in as a ladder, and we’d climb up to the first big branch holding the rope swing attached to a neighboring branch and slide out far enough to clear the trunk, hold on tight, close our eyes, and let go. The rush of pure childhood bliss that comes from a rope swing on an oak tree is second to none.

I had that flashback of childhood today as we kayaked the Flint River from Sprewell Bluff Park to Highway 18 in Upson County. The river was low, and the ride was rocky with only one high-anxiety experience when I ended up sideways on a rock with rushing currents and my boat took on water. Thank goodness my husband came to my aid or the Gypsy Soul would have been a goner for sure. But before the trouble happened, we noticed a group who had stopped to climb a tree hanging over the river and jump from a rope swing.

And that’s when I was reminded of my favorite line from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, when Fern and Avery are out swinging in the barn: “Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.”

For Christmas one year when we were riding through Epworth By the Sea to see all the luminaries lining the roads and driveways, we stopped at a church member’s house, and they gave me a red copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses with gold lettering. It was one of my favorites – that and Childcraft Volume 1, Poems and Rhymes. I think of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing still today when I see someone swinging and having such fun ~

How do you like to go up in a swing,

   Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

   Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

   Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

   Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

   Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

   Up in the air and down!

The memories and literature of my childhood came flooding back as swiftly and as powerfully as the river rapids as I watched the group swinging from the rope swing. And while I’m still all about the adrenaline rush of adventure and thrillseeking, I confessed to my husband that I’m turning in my river kayaking card after today. No more rivers for me; I’m sticking to the lakes from here on out. These hands that used to hold onto things tighter than my parents thought they would? They’re ready to let go of some of the riskier endeavors and watch from the shady edge, remembering what it was like to touch the sky.

Isaiah 43:2 

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.