Month: August 2023

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August Open Write with Wendy Everand

Wendy Everand is our host today for the August Open Write, and she inspires us to write odes to our favorite poets. You can read her full prompt here.

This brought to mind the first poet I ever knew. We lived next door to a retired school teacher in Reynolds, Georgia, and one day I got loose and barged into her house (no one locked their doors in that town back then)…..and the rest is history. After she died, two of her granddaughters compiled a collection of her poems, and I got a copy as a gift. I still believe that she pulled my poetry strings out and brushed them…..maybe even crocheted them.

Ode to Mabel G. Byrd (December 10, 1900-1/20/1987)

Mama Byrd’s poems
mainly quatrains
ABCB rhyme scheme
Crafting 4-line verse veins

Born in 1900, Taylor County
Little Sweet Georgia Peach
Died 1987, Taylor County
Lived her life to write and teach

I barged right in, in ‘69
(She was 69, I was 3)
I still remember visiting
Listening to poems at her knee

She went blind
But still knew color schemes
She’d crochet blankets as gifts for folks
In gilded yarns, bright blues, and creams

She still wrote, even blind
Poems were her favorite forms
And when I read her words today,
Time turns back, my heart warms

In 1987, I went for one last visit
Dad and I, next to her bedside
Told me she’d meet me at Heaven’s Gate
About a month before she died.

The very first poet I ever knew
Still speaks to me today
In rose gardens and peach blossoms
…..and in Granny Square crochet.  

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August Open Write: Nestlings with Gayle Sands

Gayle Sands is our host today for the second day of the August Open Write at www.ethicalela.com.  She brings us a challenge to write a nestling poem in the essence of Irene Latham.  You can read her full prompt here.  

I’m reading Ada Limon’s collection of books, and I chose Forgiveness from The Hurting Kind as my base poem.  If I were adding to a list of the things I would hold close forever, it’s Limon's poem. Here is mine, taken from hers:

Silent Water

dumb hearts
hurting each other
shadowy places
scars
bound to the blades
bound to outrun
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Welcome to the World, Noli Mae!


Today, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 1 of the August Open Write inspires us to write poems about hands. Denise Krebs of California is hosting today’s writing. You can read her full prompt here. 

Welcoming Magnolia Mae

yesterday, these hands
gripped handlebars, holding on
for the ride with friends

yesterday, these hands
swaddled babies, bandaged knees
as children grew up

yesterday, these hands
stitched a quilt for a grandchild
I will meet today

for today, these hands
will build Legos and fairy
gardens first, and then…..

today, these hands will
swaddle a new granddaughter
in rosettes and sage

so that tomorrow,
these hands will be remembered
this heart full of love
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Somebody’s Tsunami Laundry

somebody's little ripple is a drama tsunami
because somebody wrote their own life rules
and dictionary about how things are
(here's a hint: we know it's empty)

somebody's "close-knit family" endures Christmas
for a sock swap and all go home disturbed

somebody is rich, too,
richer than you, than I, than all of us,
with money in the bank to do big things
(here's another hint: we know they're undefined)
and somebody has tickets to cruise again soon
and would have gone last week except
somebody's pet squirrel died and 
somebody had to bury it and grieve a little

so we might want to tolerate somebody
and act all impressed

because somebody knows how to live

when clearly you don't, I don't, we don't.  

(But we know the truth.  See, we've done 
somebody's laundry
a time or two
so we don't pity that squirrel.)
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No Thunder Needed

Our Schnoodle Ollie is not like his brothers at all. I tell him all the time: You’re the smartest dog we’ve got.

Then, just to try to prove me wrong, his hilarious antics kick in.

He naps on the coffee table. He flips upside down in a chair with his feet all quirky and takes another nap. He brings me his ball to throw, then runs off in an entirely different direction like he thinks it’s landed somewhere else. It’ll be right in front of him on the bed, yet he digs through the covers pretending it’s somehow ended up inside the middle of the mattress. His never-ending humor keeps us entertained.

He is campaigning for all he’s worth to be Dog #1. He will trick Boo into getting out of his dad’s lap so he can sit in the favored spot.

He de-thrones the other two in other ways, too. He takes the prized bed spot and then pretends to be heavily asleep when either of the other barks at him.

He ain’t skeert.

You know those dogs that

hear thunder and curl up

in the sink? Meet Ollie.

No thunder needed

to do ridiculous things

for no good reason

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Underground Books

A colleague shared that she thought I’d enjoy visiting a bookstore she’d visited on her birthday.

The Underground Bookstore is in Carrollton, Georgia on the downtown square.

She was right. This place is charming, and the literary candles that use scents from items mentioned in their namesake books are delightful.

You step down into stairs so old they’re not built to code, and immediately the smell of books and the antiquity of bookshelves greets you like an old friend. Staff reviews line the shelves under featured titles, enticing you to read all the books.

And the poetry section……oh my! The poetry section had a few holes here and there (no Harjo, only one Limon, and only two obscure Collins) but still an amazing collection of those lesser-known poets and titles that sell the books. I came away with a couple of Sarah Kay books (one signed), one Collins, one Macfarlane/Morris (signed), and a book I needed for a book club that is already well underway – – Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

After dinner on the square, we went to the most aromatically-roasted coffee shop ever, the kind with old brick walls and people talking in comfortable chairs around a round table and folks on computers doing work, ……..and right there in the middle of it all, the two of us…….reading books.

We both worked on projects most of Saturday after visiting our own local coffee shop and Savored Sunday afternoon on the streets of another town this week, and the twist-up was a beautiful way to end the weekend and start the week ahead.

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Sunday Morning on the Johnson Funny Farm

Aside from the usual blasts of neighbors’ target practice gunfire and tannerite explosions just to light up the Pike County Discussion Page at 8:00 on any given Sunday morning, the planes from the local airport flying low and the jets flying high along the flight path above the farm from the Atlanta Airport, and the roosters excited to see the sunrise after the long, dark night, the sweet notes of birdsong from the branches of the Loblolly pines brings peace and serenity.


One of our deer families has learned how to enter and exit the old goat pen, where they feast on breakfast and enjoy a little more security and thus a more relaxed dining experience than they normally have, especially with their little ones.

The white-breasted nuthatches laugh like evil circus clowns with their white-painted faces as they climb up and down the suet trees and keep watch while they eat.

And the hummingbirds engage in full-body air jousting squabbles over the sweet nectar at every feeder.

What I love most about my birdwatching time, despite all the best reasons I’d sometimes love a noise ordinance in our county, is that all deadlines and demands are on hold while I sip my morning coffee, never knowing what I’ll see or hear next.

This is wildlife as I’ve come to know it.

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Useful Souvenirs

I may not be sporting a Rockport, Massachusetts t-shirt, but I do have this.

Every time I scrub dishes, I think of that cute little Sail Loft in Bear Skin Neck, and it takes me back to one of the most scenic United States towns I’ve ever visited.

The VRBO unit had one of these dish brushes in the sink, and I fell in love with it right there in the standing-room-only kitchen in that iconic New England coastal town that still plays steeple hymns at 4 pm on the church organ, probably to remind everyone walking around in this much natural beauty that it might be the closest place to heaven on earth.

Even before I left Massachusetts, I went online and ordered one for myself from Amazon. The Lodge. They may specialize in cast iron, but they make a mean dish brush, too.

As I scrubbed the two crock pots from yesterday’s Meal Train Mississippi Pot Roast and our own MPR dinner with cooked-on carrots and potatoes, I thought back to my walks through this quaint little New England town to take photos of the rocky shore, the sunrise seaglass hunt, the angel wings I found on White Wharf beach in one of the least expected places to ever find a pair (an unquestionable hello from my mother in heaven), and the little wooden boats that looked like they were sitting on glass as they were anchored like lone ducks in the water.

Funny how a dish brush can do that.

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Savoring Saturday

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for several reasons.

An Indigo Bunting performs acrobatic moves in a tree
  • I’m cooking dinner for a friend who is now cancer-free after radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, and I’ll get to see her today for the first time since early June.
  • I’ll finally finish a quilt for my new granddaughter and get to see the true “rag quilt” look of the final product.
  • I’ll get to read from the next book in Sarah Donovan’s book club, even though the hammock is out of the question on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend of the summer here.
  • The weeds that are completely out of control will get handled by someone else.
  • There’ll be some time for birding before it gets hot outside, when the birds are most active.
  • There’ll be some time for writing chapters in two books I’m working on with my writing group.
  • Some pressure washing might happen.

And the other thing that might happen is a trip to an underground bookstore where they sell these candles that use the scents of things in the books they’re named after, like Alice in Wonderland with the unbirthday cake fragrance, and Anne of Green Gables with some lemon and jasmine. A co-worker told me about this place, maybe an hour from here, where she started Christmas shopping last weekend because of all the unique gifts she’d found when her husband took her there as part of her birthday celebration.

For now, I’m settled into my writing chair, enjoying the early morning silence of the house. I’ve taken the boys out for their morning relief romp, and they all came back in and settled back to sleep right away. I can hear a Carolina Wren singing at the top of its lungs through the kitchen window, and the faintest light looks like pinholes through the tree leaves against the eastern side of the Johnson Funny Farm.

Five minutes from now, at a quarter to seven, I’ll be outdoors with a steaming cup of coffee, starting a bird count to mark the species I hear and see.

And I won’t be rushed to get showered and dressed today. I’ll savor my coffee and my own private bird concert on the front porch way out here in our remote corner under the Loblolly pines of rural Georgia and give a thousand thanks for the blessings of another sunrise to enjoy the spectacular splendor of the woods.