Category: Experience

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Open Write Day 3 of 3 November 2025: Gratitude Kenning with Mo Daley of Illinois

Mo Daley of Illinois is our host for the third and final day of the December Open Write. She inspires us to write Kennings today. Here is a part of what she shares, but you can read her full prompt here.

November is a month of gratitude. It’s a great time to reflect on the people, places, and things that mean so much to us. The Kenning comes from Norse myths or legends. A Kenning is a poem that uses two-word phrases as metaphors to describe something. For example, you might use tree-hugger instead of environmentalist.

Think of a person, place, animal, or thing for which you are grateful. Develop a list of attributes and actions for your subject. Think of fun and creative ways to describe your topic without saying who or what it is. Your poem can have as many or as few kennings as you’d like. Think of your poem as if it were a riddle. The hardest part for me was giving the poem a title without giving away my subject.

I’m continuing to write 6-7 poems this week, so today’s poem is 6-7-6. Fitz is one of three Schnoodles we have rescued over the past decade, and he is the star of the show today. He naps in a brown velvet chair and often throws his arm up over the arm rest as if he is a person. Sometimes I think he would look best in a a tophat with a gold chain eyepiece, smoking an old-fashioned pipe. He came to us as Henry, but we renamed him Fitz, after F. Scott Fitzgerald. The name Fitz fits, but we realize that he was aptly named Henry after Thoreau himself. He’s far more of a thinker than he ever will be a party animal.

Transcendental Two-Toothed Love Beggar

he’s my radiant heater

this fierce lizard hunter

my brown velvet chair napper

Fitz , our senior-most rescue Schnoodle

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 November 2025: Traditions Tanka with Mo Daley of Illinois

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

Several years ago ~ from the time of his first bear hunt to early teens
The walk that started it all: the first hunt for the elusive lellow bear
Today, the hunts continue
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Open Write Day 1 of 3 November 2025 with Mo Daley of Illinois: Clean Up and Clean Out

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

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November 14 – Shoes: 6,7

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

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November 13 – 6,7 in Denver, Colorado

Denver’s Blucifer: a 6,7 poem

they said I’d see Blucifer

outside Denver’s airport

his eyes glowing evil red

I stayed on the lookout

from our Uber’s front seat

and sure enough: there he stood!

Denver has offbeat art

in a Waldo’s Chicken

we saw paintings of Ozzie

(biting at a chicken’s head)

and Reba McEntyre

Prince and Martha Stewart

Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura)

……all featuring chickens

unexpected artwork makes

me want to go exploring……

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November Tricube

Sometimes when I tap my pencil or my fingers, I feel the rhythm of a poem I hadn’t planned on writing. It’s like hearing music and wanting to dance, only there’s no music and I don’t want to dance. I think this might be like the call of the spirit wolf to the cub who spent hours on end reading poetry with a flashlight as a child and has now grown up – – and something rhythmic this way comes on a howling wind outside. Or something Iike that.

One of the poets in one of my writing groups – I believe it was Denise Krebs – introduced us to the tricube form a few years ago. It’s three stanzas, each with three lines,

each with three syllables. The rhyme pattern is a,b,c,a,b,c,a,b,c, and the meter is trochee with stressed/unstressed/stressed. These are just fun to write, especially using seasonal words. Try one today!

November Tricube

turkey stew
pumpkin spice
gravy boat

fireplace flue
windshield ice
hooded coat

vibrant view
saffron rice
.....did you vote??....

A Challenge for the week:

Fellow blogger Anita Ferrari inspires a new poem today. One I have not yet written. She writes of the six seven syndrome going around. You can read her post here. This week, I’m going to try several variations of six seven poems – – poems with six syllables on one line, seven on the next. Poems with six words, then seven, and even six stanzas and then seven. I’ll post them this week and then one again next Tuesday. Anyone up for the challenge?

Let’s write six seven poems this week! Who’ll join me??

Thanks to Two Writing Teachers at Slice of Life
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November Gift Basket

One type of poem I’ve been writing this year is a gift basket poem – – what would I give a recipient in any given month of the year? For November, the choice is clear: it’ll be filled with brown things. 

If I were giving
you a gift basket
I’d go basketweave brown!


you’d receive
a caramel cake, fresh-baked and glazed
to gratify all visiting gobblers


a leather-bound gratitude journal
to gather your blessings this holiday season


and a warm wooden photo frame
to season your photos like a perfectly browned turkey ~
a cornucopia of nourishment sure 
to fill your appetite!

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Spiritual Journey: Doubt

This month’s Spiritual Journey is hosted by Patricia Franz, who has selected doubt as the theme. You can read her post here. It’s quite inspiring, and I particularly love her insight as she shares her thinking on doubt: I’m convinced that doubt lives in the imperfect space between who we are and who we think we want to be.

Since Patricia’s post last Thursday, I’ve returned again and again to this idea, toying with doubt and how it plays out in my own life in risks not taken and opportunities not seized. Fear and doubt are close friends with deeply intertwining roots. And what is doubt’s opposite? Certainty? Trust? Belief? In Hebrews, the Bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So by that definition, faith is the opposite of doubt.

I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomas, but I will be the first to confess that I may score a perfect 10 in Olympic skepticism. My mother’s keen eye for scrutiny and her innate sense of intuition, passed on to her from her mother – and hers before her – ended up in me and my own children. It’s a form of doubt, yes, and on the Myers-Briggs Personality test it’s that gnawing J for judging in the analytics that gets me, where I’d much prefer be a perceiver.

I do some doubting.

But I also do some praying. Nearly a decade ago, I made the decision to turn off the radio and the audiobooks on the way to work and use the drive as my dedicated prayer time each morning. My drive to the office is roughly 8 to 10 minutes, and I pray for each of our children, their mates, and their children. I pray for each side of our extended family and always add “even the ones we don’t like,” because, you know, God already knows about that whole mess.

At the end of Patricia’s post, she shares that she tries to cultivate doubt as a spiritual practice– deepening my capacity to sit with questions; allowing space for the sacred pause; learning to be comfortable living in the mystery. This, too, resonates deeply with me this morning as I write in my favorite green chair in the living room, my Schnoodle Boo Radley draped over the back of my chair near my neck, and his rescued brothers Fitz and Ollie snoozing on the floor at complete peace with the world around them, doubting nothing more than the intentions of every deer and squirrel in the yard.

Like Patricia, I need to embrace my doubts and celebrate them as gutterball rails to be used to discern correct steps where I ask the Lord to illuminate the paths I should take. Just like that concept of Danish hygge that I love so much in the winter – – we can’t have the concept of hygge, or the warmth and comfort within the cozy cabin, without the raging blizzard outside. The feeling of warmth and comfort has to have its opposite somewhere to be appreciated.

Such is doubt. In the tiny cabin of the heart and soul, where the storms of doubt rage outside, faith is the strong assurance that despite the weatherman or his alarmist reports, all will be well as we trust the good Lord and His plan. Faith shines most brightly in the threat of doubt.

in a world of doubt

we can choose the light of faith

to guide us through storms

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November 7 – Country Evening

Country Evening

rural countryside

full moon rising, stars falling

Great Horned Owls conspire

Now that the trees have been harvested, we can see shooting stars from our front porch!

We have a pair of Great Horned Owls who like to chatter late into the night.