Patchwork Prose and Verse
The Shadorma form is six lines, containing a syllable line count in this order: 3/5/3/3/7/5. To welcome December, I celebrate all those who are special in my life today – family, readers (that’s you), writing circles, book club, and friends who fill my life with warmth.
leaning in
pouring tea with friends
embracing
fireside warmth
this is how to live a life~
I got dressed for this!
After returning from an AI Summit in Denver, Colorado where we’d discovered a vacant lot full of playful, entertaining prairie dogs, our Teaching and Learning Department re-created the mascot for our upcoming professional development club that begins in January. We got the idea for the club from a team of teachers in Gwinnett County, Georgia who’d presented their voluntary PD club at the fall GACIS conference in Athens, Georgia in September. They are the BATS (Better At Teaching Strategies). We decided to be the BEES (Becoming Excellent Educators). We designed a bee logo and even ordered little bees as decor for our meetings. But then we saw those prairie dogs and considered their initials. P.D. We called one by its initials and realized we were calling him a given name – Petey.
Petey the Professional Development Prairie Dog. We liked it better than the bees. So the week before Thanksgiving, we spent some time with our Instructional Technologist designing our new mascot and creating an invitation to gather and garner interest on universal strategy topics. My team asked me to create a limerick for the invitation, so I created one to show that this form of Professional Development we plan to offer will be teacher-driven, not district-driven. We sent out a QR code on the invitation, promising snacks and fun, and we can’t wait to start this new club.
Here is our invitation:
I’m hoping that someone who is reading this may have a voluntary PD club in your school system. If so, I’d love to know your formats and structures of successful PD clubs. Please share and lend any expertise that would be helpful for us.
On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.
After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.
Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.
We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.
This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.
I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.
It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.
And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.
and so I sit in
my green chair, reflecting on
Thanksgivings past while
counting my blessings ~
browsing Kindle, Audible
for my next great trip
because over rolls
turkey and cranberry sauce
and pecan pie, we’ll
talk books, and that’s a
festive way to celebrate
~ turning the pages ~
Today we’ll go hunting for a new wreath to go on our exterior garage wall and one for the back door. It’s the best way to spend a Saturday – seeking wreaths! We’ll have one of our grandsons along to help, too, and we can’t wait to spend the day with him.
Last year, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we rented a car in Boston to make a loop through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts following the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention I was attending at the time. As we left Kennebunkport, I spotted what I thought was a fruit stand on the side of the road. It looked a lot like where, in my rural Georgia county, we would pull over and buy watermelons or tomatoes. But as we neared, I could see that the people who were gathered around the long tables were not tenderly squeeze-testing tomatoes or thumping watermelons. They were creating fresh wreaths using the greenery stacked in piles on tables behind them.
A wreath-making stand! There is still a part of me deep inside that craves this L.L.Bean-style wreath that is all made of fresh evergreen and so natural and simple that it would rival any wreath that feels the need to proclaim Christmas in any other way than through real live nature, just greenery and berries. So it just might be that we find a wreath frame and some zip ties and twine and wire. It just might so happen that we take our little hacksaw and sharp camping axes and put on our hiking boots and go to the back side of the property and gather evergreens that we cut fresh to put on the frame and make one ourselves, New England style.
It would do my heart a lot of good to make a wreath with our grandson today. But we’ll have to be careful to watch for the elusive lellow bear if we trudge out into the woods. He’s out there somewhere…..
Wreath Seeker’s Haiku
it’s wreath-seeking day
balsams, firs, cedars, spruces
today we seek wreaths
I’ve got a bad case of FOMO this week as all my writing friends and fellow English teacher buddies gather at NCTE to share time breathing the most fantastic air ever in Denver, Colorado. Some of them will be giving a presentation on various formats of poetry at a roundtable session, and my fellow authors of Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas will all be at a book signing sponsored by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. I’ll miss my small group of Stafford Challenge writers, my EthicalELA pals, those with whom I’ve collaborated on writing a few other books, and the Slice of Life writers who will be gathering for dinner and rich conversation. I am thrilled for them, but I feel such longing in my heart that I cannot be there this year to celebrate all things Literacy.
My friend Margaret Simon, who blogs at Reflections on the Teche, will be one of those at NCTE, and she will be hosting a roundtable of Zeno Zine writing. Here is the link to her blog, where you can read the format for a Zeno and Margaret’s Zeno. She writes, “. A Zeno poem is one in which the syllable count is 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1. The challenge is each one syllable line rhymes.” When I read her blog yesterday morning, it was all the inspiration I needed to write a Zeno. Since yesterday was our annual Friendsgiving feast at work, that will be my topic today.
Friendsgiving Zeno
smells from the kitchen wafting through
the office hub
find my
nose
turkey, dressing….
Heaven
knows!
spoons scoop YESes
know no
NOs
My friend Denise Krebs of California introduced the Sidlak form yesterday in her blog post. She explains that it is a 5-line poem, and the syllable count of the first four lines are 3/5/7/9, and the fifth line contains a color and any number of syllables. You can read her Sidlak here. My poem for today will take this form, about a new experience: a silent book club.
My friend and fellow book club member Janette Bradley and her husband Chris attend a silent book club, and they invited my husband and me to come read for an hour in a fudge shop on a Monday night. We arrived and sat down at their table, then ordered ice cream (my husband) and a cold mocha coffee (me) before we began reading silently for one hour on the clock. It was a great way to read completely undisturbed, and we plan to attend again on an upcoming silent book club month. If you haven’t tried, this, I’d urge you to find a silent book club near you and attend one. I like that there was no pressure to have read chapters ahead of time and no need to discuss whatever books we chose to bring. It was low-stakes, and we thoroughly enjoyed it!
Silent Book Club Sidlak
silently
we read for one hour
from a book of our choosing ~
Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life
set in Vermont’s Green Mountains heals the soul
*A special thank you to our friends Janette and Chris for inviting us to the book club!
Last week, a post by fellow blogger Anita Ferreri gave me an idea: could we possibly use the viral “word of the year” 6-7 to inspire poetry? This random response from students was driving teachers and parents all over the country a little batty at Halloween, when some schools began banning it. Others embraced it and adopted it as a way to dress up, inviting folks to come to school dressed as 6, 7, or 6-7. Our ninth grade academy was one of those schools, and the fun was never more math-y.
All week, I’ve been writing 6-7 poems. Some have six or seven lines, others have six or seven syllables on each line. I haven’t written a concrete poem in the shape of 6-7, but perhaps that will be a challenge for an upcoming snow day.
As I sat in Denver, Colorado last week during an AI Summit, we decided to take a quick walking lap around the building to stretch our legs. One of our colleagues noticed something rolling in the dirt in the empty lot beside our hotel. He stopped in his tracks.
Is that a prairie dog? (I felt a Slice of Life happening…)
Our heads snapped left to get a better look.
Indeed, it was. And once I knew they were there, I couldn’t keep my mind off of them. We keep taking random laps just to bask in their cuteness. My window, not facing the view of the Rockies but facing north toward the Aurora Borealis at night and now these just-discovered prairie dogs, was just the reminder I’d needed to be thankful I hadn’t given in to my first instinct to ask for a room with a better view. The good Lord was working the reasons for this odd room choice far away from the rest of my group. These prairie dogs WERE the view, and, like the Northern Lights, so entertaining to watch. Who needs the Colorado Rockies when there are prairie dogs? It took me back to Amarillo, Texas the morning we were leaving for Cadillac Ranch and I’d have preferred to have stayed and watched the prairie dogs in the vacant lot next to our hotel in that city, much like this deja vu situation.
So today, here is a 6-7 poem about these cute critters.
Colorado Prairie Dogs
took me out of my summit
more playful than AI
popping up here and there
tunnel infrastructure
underground labyrinths
far more captivating
than AI’s mindlessness
Tune in next Tuesday to see where our thinking about the prairie dogs took us during one part of the summit when our minds began drifting……(hint: we rethought the mascot for our new voluntary professional development club that starts in December)!
Mo Daley is our host for today’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to write tanka poems to share our traditions. This may be one you’d like to try today, so I’m including her directions below.
Mo writes, “This time of year always gets me thinking about traditions. There are many my family and I look forward to celebrating with each other. I really love hearing about other peoples’ traditions, too. Hayrides, Oktoberfest, pumpkin patches, bonfires, corn mazes, pumpkin carving, and cooking might be some of the traditions that come to mind when you think of fall. Today’s poem is a way for you to flex your poetic muscles while letting all of us learn a little bit more about you and the traditions you observe.”
Mo inspires us with these words: “Write a tanka or series of tankas telling us all about a favorite, or maybe least favorite, fall tradition. A tanka is a traditional Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables over 5 lines. The syllable count is 5/7/5/7/7. Usually there is a turn in the third line. Consider focusing on sensory images to help us feel like we are right there with you. “
You can read Mo’s poem at the Open Write today by clicking here. In my poem below, I feel the need to clarify the spelling of the yellow bear. My first grandson could not say yellow, so when my son suggested they go on a bear hunt on our farm in rural Georgia to find the highly-elusive-never-before-seen yellow bear, my grandson couldn’t stop talking about the lellow bear, and none of us have called it anything different ever since. I still have the picture of them setting out to find it, and it warms my heart to think that one simple moment, one slight of the tongue, became a family tradition that remains to this day.
Traditions Tanka
first, the pumpkin bread
that started when they were kids
I tie the apron
sift the flour, mix in the eggs
add sugar, spices, pumpkin
dominoes thunder
onto great granny’s table
the one I redid
while the bread bakes, we play games
we pair with grandkids
we all walk the farm
looking for the “lellow bear”
every eye stays peeled
lellow bear is elusive
someday, we might catch a glimpse
the coffee pot stays
full of fresh brew to help us
keep up with these kids
Scrabble (turntable version)
for adults, post-kids’-bedtime
togetherness fills my soul
I take a deep breath
they were born last week
now here they are, with their own
tears of gratitude well up
Our host today for the first day of the Monthly Open Write for December is Monday Daley of Illinois, who inspires us to write cleaning poems since it is National Clean Up Day. You can read her full post here, along with her mentor poem and the response poems of the writers who participate.
Earlier this year, those in the school district office where I work were saddened to learn that our favorite custodian had taken a job in a neighboring county because of lower wages in our own. We understood. But we grieved that daily absence of one who was more than a custodian to us. She was a friend who shared about her children and the concerns of her country. She was family. She’d given us her number in case we ever wanted to call to have our own personal homes cleaned, which she offers as a service on weekends.
The older I get, the more difficult cleaning is, and if I’ve learned one thing from my father’s aging process, it’s this: stay on top of the cleaning. As I near 60 years of age, I hear my own words of advice to him echoing through the veil of time: “Hire someone. Don’t try to do all this by yourself. There are professionals out there who know what to do and how to do it better than you can.”
So two weeks ago, I called my friend Dianelys to come and meet with me about cleaning. She brought her mother along, the one who loves plants but doesn’t speak any English. I saw her mother giving approving nods to the plants as we walked through the house so I could show her what I would like to have done. I’ve been establishing some Night Blooming Cereus stalks, so I plan to leave one out today with a note for her and her sister in law to take to her mother, on this first day that Dianelys will clean our house with her cleaning partner.
And so today, on this National Day of Cleaning, it seems fitting to write my 6,7 poem to celebrate Dianelys and cleaning.
Taking My Own Advice
I’m taking my own advice,
Dad, doing what I thought you
should have done years ago
you’d be proud of me today
phoning a friend to help
where my abilities now
fall short ~ bending, vacuuming,
scrubbing, shining, polishing ~
I look to the Heavens
offer a gratitude smile
as always, you taught me well
one way or another
this cleaning hits the targets
that need it most ~ for me and
my friend, Dianelys
she’ll be here in two hours
with her mop bucket and rags
so now the mad dash to clean
before the real cleaner comes
One Pair Shoe Rule: a 6,7 poem in lined syllables
I have a one-pair shoe rule
whenever I travel
that goes with my direct flight
plan with one small carry-on
a loaded Kindle device
fully charged, ready to read
wear back what I wore there
and every piece of clothing
matches every other piece
and my basic black zip boots
Common Threads 