Author: kimhaynesjohnson

Today I’m hosting the Open Write at ethicalela.com, so I’m sharing my prompt for paint chip poems. A special thanks to Sarah Donovan for her leadership and space at ethicalela. Please visit the site throughout the day and read the colorful poems that come to life at http://www.ethicalela.com/paint-chip-poetry/

Paint Chip Poetry

A stroll through a paint section can be just the right inspiration for poetry!  You can purchase a set of Paint Chip Poetry cards from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Paint-Chip-Poetry-Color-Wordplay/dp/1452158800/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=paint+chip+poetry&qid=1638130458&sr=8-1  

but you can also find your own colorful words for free at paint stores or on websites such as Sherwin Williams here: https://www.sherwin-williams.com  or Glidden here:  https://www.glidden.com by clicking on the color chips to discover vibrant color words (deep onyx, copper pot, heartfelt, hot cocoa, dirt road…) 

Process:  Gather some paint chip words from a website or a paint department and have fun arranging the descriptive colors into lines of poetry!

Example using colors that I selected from Paint Chip Poetry:

smooth sailing; blank canvas; summer squash; seedling; dirt road; fresh-squeezed, chamomile tea; firefly; waterfall

Spring Walk

smooth sailing days of spring

walking the blank canvas of

the dirt road less traveled

smelling summer squash seedlings

and fresh-squeezed tulips

ambling home for a front porch swing

cup of chamomile tea

steeped in fireflies

and waterfalls

Here is a video of a Paint Chip poetry process:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuQYek393hM

I’m hosting today at Open Write. Please visit http://www.ethicalela.com/multiple-shovels/ throughout the day to read the poems of a group of talented teacher writers who truly empower each other with encouragement and positive feedback. If you are an educator – homeschool teacher, retired teacher, instructor in any setting – please join us monthly at the Open Write to read our work or to write with us!

I’m sharing my prompt today for the process of writing Golden Shovel variations here on my blog as well on this day that we set aside to remember the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his leadership in the fight for civil rights. In the past few years, I have accompanied a group of middle school students to Selma, Alabama, where we visited the churches where he spoke. My favorite memory from one of those trips was walking with the students over the Edmund Pettus Bridge as the chorus teacher led the students in singing We Shall Overcome. The spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lives on, alive and well in our world today. I’m grateful for this day to reflect on his courage and bravery and his legacy of activism.

Inspiration 

Multiple Shovels

One of our favorite previous forms to write is the Golden Shovel poem.  Today, let’s try different versions of the Golden Shovel – a Golden Shovel, Double Shovel, or Multiple Shovel.  We can begin with single or double shovels (vertical spine lines at beginning or end, beginning/middle, middle/end, or beginning/end), and later experiment with triple/quadruple/quintuple shovels (vertical lines appearing at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end) once familiar with the Golden Shovel form.  

Process:  Begin by selecting lines of poetry (or lines from a famous speech, perhaps, as we celebrate the accomplishments of and reflect on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today) with the same number of words, and write the lines vertically (I call them spine lines). You can decide whether each spine line fits best as a beginning, middle, or end spine.  Next, craft the lines of a new poem around the spine lines you have selected.

Example:  Here is a Double Golden Shovel that uses spine lines at the beginning and end – comprised of two seven-word sections found in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech: 

When Will One Day Come? (Title chosen by Dr. Wilson Felix Haynes, Jr. – my dad)

I cry for justice ~

have a fight-filled grief that rolls 

a hurtstream of suffering, spilling down; 

dream in slo-mo, like

that trickle of rushing waters –

one from whose wellsprings night and 

day spew forth righteousness

Here is a video of double, triple, and quadruple Golden Shovel variations:  https://youtu.be/XEKR5pYlLl0

There are multiple shovel poems throughout October 2021 and some in October 2020 that you can find in the search feature as well, although some did not convert from Blogger to WordPress in the correct format.

Here is my first-ever quintuple Golden Shovel poem: https://kimhaynesjohnson.com/2021/10/27/hour-of-kitten-prayer/

Special thanks to Sarah J. Donovan of http://www.ethicalela.com for offering the Open Write each month as a safe and supportive space for us to write. I hope to meet many more of my family of writers at this year’s NCTE Conference in Anaheim, where I hope to present Mashed Potato poetry in a roundtable session, showing how even the most reluctant writers can compose poetry without lifting a pencil! Mashed Potato poetry uses a bank of borrowed lines already written on tongue depressors, with lines of poetry on one side and poets and poems on the back. You can see an example here: https://kimhaynesjohnson.com/2021/10/22/stars/

Stacey Joy challenged our writing group to write monotetra poems today at the Open Write at Ethical ELA, which you can visit here: http://www.ethicalela.com/monotetr/

She writes, “The monotetra is a poetic form developed by Michael Walker consisting of mono-rhymed quatrains with a refrain. It can be only one quatrain or as many as you choose to write. Each line consists of 8 syllables.”

I look forward to hosting the next two days at Open Write, where we will explore variations of Golden Shovel and Paint Chip poems.

Beneath Implied

listening takes more than clean ears
listening’s more than what one hears
it may mean one exposes fears
it evokes tears, it evokes tears 

to listen takes an open heart 
to listen may bring a fresh start
or may rejoin things torn apart
wisdom impart, wisdom impart 

listen! healing lives deep inside
listen! heart and soul open wide
expressed truths within us abide 
beneath implied, beyond implied 

Many thanks to Sarah J. Donovan for her work at EthicalELA, for continuing to provide a safe and challenging space for us to enjoy.

shorthand, cursive scrawl

envelopes, notescraps, swatches

stained, torn, ripped, dog-eared

/

family relics

recipes from ancestors

hand-written visits

/

ageless breaths, voices

transcending generations

whispers from heaven

/

timeless apron strings

roots of our family tree

stirring presences

/

priceless script heirlooms

iambic kitchen memoirs

eternity’s spoons

/

invisible pasts

emerging in the sauces

delectable worlds

/

I’m cooking tonight

guess who’s coming to dinner?

they’ve already been

/

One of my parents’ favorite things to do in the years before Mom grew too frail with Parkinson’s Disease was walk. St. Simon’s Island, (Go Dawgs!) Georgia offered adventure on every outing – on their familiar street routes through the Spanish moss oak-draped neighborhoods, in the ballpark where I played softball as a child, on the sidewalks of the village and down the pier where our mother taught my brother and me how to crab, and along the beaches.

They found things – mostly coins and an occasional dollar bill, but sometimes they found tourists’ random belongings, too. Mom had a knack for such fortuitous finds- and Dad still takes morning sweeps of the island to see what it’s offering up for grabs these days, no doubt shadowed by her guiding presence. Just as every islander knows, if you walk the beach on an outgoing tide early in the morning, there’s no telling what you might discover that has washed up on shore.

On my 49th birthday in July 2015, my parents gave me a silver St. Simon’s Island bracelet from the St. Simon’s Jewelry Company. It has two intertwining S letters, and whether you’re a native islander or visit St. Simon’s Island for vacation, these bracelets are all the rage. They also have rings, earrings, and pendants to match, but the bracelets are by far the most popular pieces.

I still remember opening my gift at the kitchen table. It came in a navy blue box with silver lettering – St. Simon’s Jewelry Co. It fit perfectly, even on my bigger-boned wrist – the one I broke right there in the neighborhood back in third grade when I fell off a ladder climbing up to the roof of Candy Pruitt’s house. How could a simple silver bracelet evoke such rich memories of the places of my childhood – the trees, the beaches, Neptune Park, church…..back when the world was a safer, simpler place? I carry the island with me every time I wear it. Oh, how I’ve treasured it from the moment I first slipped it on – even before I knew it would be the last birthday gift in my mother’s lifetime.

Then, sometime in the late summer of 2015 as she and Dad were walking on the beach one morning, Mom found a St. Simon’s ring washed up on the shore.

“We’ll give it to Kim,” she told Dad, excited about her serendipitous find, “to match her bracelet!”

She put the ring in a top chest drawer and asked Dad to help her remember to give it to me the next time I came. Since she suffered from Lewy Body Dementia, she was vigilant about sharing her wishes with Dad when she was fully present in the moment so that she could rest assured that he knew what to do when her tomorrows stopped coming.

But her disease progressed much more quickly in the final stages than any of us had predicted. Though I made the five hour trip home several times in the months before she died, the ring was the last thing on Dad’s mind, and Mom was rarely cognizant of much in her final months. She died in December as we held hands around her bed in the very room where the ring still rested in the drawer.

A few months after her funeral, Dad came for a visit. I could tell he had something on his mind.

“I’m not suggesting anything here,” he began, taking the silver ring out of his pocket and placing it on the kitchen counter. He stopped short of finishing his sentence, wringing his hands, wiping his brow, and pausing for a moment before he continued.

“I don’t know how to explain this, Kim, but your mom put this ring in a drawer and asked me to help her remember to give it to you. I haven’t thought of this ring in months, but as I was walking up her wheelchair ramp in the garage, I looked down – – and there it was, right in the middle of the ramp.”

Chill bumps ran across my shoulders. She’d known he was coming to visit me, and she worked from the other side to help him remember to bring the ring. Our eyes misty with tears, I took the ring and placed it on my finger to find it was a perfect fit. Dad shared the story of their walk on the beach the morning she’d found it, how she was so thrilled that I’d have a ring to match the bracelet.

Even more miraculous, perhaps, is that most of my jewelry was stolen in 2021, and only a few pieces remained – among them, my cherished St. Simon’s bracelet and ring.

I’m not suggesting anything here…..but it wouldn’t surprise me if those pieces had actually been among the stolen items…….and that somehow they’d made yet another mysterious, unexplainable journey home to me.

At least that’s what I choose to believe.

I’ve never been much of a shopper.   I’d rather be doing pretty much anything else.

I think new coworkers figure it out quickly – I can see their wheels turning as they look in my direction and wonder whether I’ve got day-of-the-week outfits hanging on a rotation schedule in my closet.

My lackluster shopping habits garner thankful praise from my sweet husband about his “low-maintenance, frugal wife” and her simple ways.

Until it concerns his food. And we were out of yogurt.

When he arrived for Christmas, Dad brought a bag of fruitcake cookies and a Georgia fruitcake for all of us to enjoy here on the Johnson Funny Farm in rural mid-Georgia. My soul was warmed into holiday spirit when I imagined Aunt Sook of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory announcing: “Oh my…it’s fruitcake weather!” as her breath smoked the windowpane in the frigid kitchen. I wondered if, true to the story, she had ever really sent one of Haha’s whiskey-laden fruitcakes to President Roosevelt, whose Little White House in Warm Springs Dad and I had just visited two days before Christmas. I sliced away merrily, setting out the sticky colorful cherry and orange candied-fruit and nut pieces on a plate.

Trouble is, most folks don’t like fruitcake. You have to have deep, multi-generational Southern roots and some serious value upbringing to ever acquire a taste for it. That’s why I was so proud that my Oklahoma-born/Georgia-raised husband took a quick liking to fruitcake and savored some of the brick. Even still, we had a lot left over. His affinity for it came in handy in the absence of more suitable breakfast groceries.

With gratitude to Felix, today’s Pantoum celebrates our nut-blended Georgia roots!

Go Dawgs!

.

Georgia Fruitcake Pantoum 

I hadn’t bought groceries

we’d run slap out of yogurt ~

Georgia fruitcake…for breakfast?!?

Dad’s script: COFFEE TIME  -SANTA

We’d run slap out of yogurt ~

fruit on the bottom vs. fruit throughout

Dad’s script: COFFEE TIME  -SANTA

Ga. Fruitcake : our nut-blended roots 

fruit on the bottom vs. fruit throughout

only 107.5 calories per ounce! 

Ga. Fruitcake : our nut-blended roots

Santa’s January answer

only 107.5 calories per ounce! 

Georgia fruitcake – for breakfast?!?

Santa’s January answer

I hadn’t bought groceries  

 

 

 

Briar, teaching Boo Radley how to solve a dog treat puzzle – December 2021

Billy Collins, well-loved poet and two-term US Poet Laureate, wrote his poem Fiftieth Birthday Eve, looking at the big 5-0 staring him down from a March midnight years ago.  I’ve linked two of his original poems at the bottom of today’s blog post.  Today, here is a Collins-inspired poem to celebrate Briar’s birthday tomorrow, with an equally enthusiastic nod to pine trees and whales and empty suitcases and dog treat puzzles – and a world of other extraordinary things.

On Your Sixty-First Birthday Eve

61. The figure alone flashes a stick-figure photo of us,

me with the tens-digit rounded bottom,

you standing tall in the thin, skinny ones

I want to daydream here on the Johnson Funny Farm,

of traveling to Europe, to Ireland’s green shores

a place of peaceful solitude, a respite from the world

But I keep picturing 61, seeing us contentedly-rooted

on this rural Georgia pine tree farm, evergreen-forest-moored

our place of peaceful solitude, our respite from the world

I try contemplating the sufferings of our luggage,

longing for more purpose behind the attic door,

lips zipped too tight to yell down their resfeber

But even an adventure to the world’s great places

touted as culture or well-traveled landmarks,

cannot diminish the worlds of wonder here, as

61, standing at the threshold

with a suitcase to home –

our toothbrushes, our worn-soled shoes,

our farm plat a traveler’s vast world map

By evening we’ll rest our feet by our fire

drink coffee, eat leftover brick slices of fruitcake

warmed in a moistened paper towel

in the microwave

thinking nothing particularly notable of the

authentic rural life we live

the most well-traveled journeymen will never know.

And this day, as every day, we set out

with smaller suitcases – daybags, backpacks,

handbags, totes

grocery bags with local foods, souvenirs of home

the most well-traveled journeymen will never see.

It follows tradition – this marked trip around the sun,

the cake and ice cream with candles aflame

the gift with a wrapping, tied with a string

The rest is up to us – to see the wonder in our ordinary –

to celebrate the Whale Days as we do Pine Tree Days and

Empty Suitcase Days and Dog Treat Puzzle Days

ever as ceremoniously as we do birthdays.

Happy Birthday, Briar!

You can read Billy Collins’ Fiftieth Birthday Eve here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=38216

You can read Billy Collins’ Whale Day here (or listen):

https://www.kwbu.org/post/likely-stories-whale-day-billy-collins-0#stream/0