Patchwork Prose and Verse
If I were giving
you a gift basket
I’d go green!
you’d receive
an herb garden
to season your skillet
a canister of Poet’s green tea
to strengthen your stylus
and a sliver of
Sterling Moss soap from Green Willow of Georgia
to scent your shower
a basket sure
to sweeten your spirit!
Today, Dr. Sarah Donovan, founder of Ethicalela.com, is our host for the last day of VerseLove 2025. She inspires us with several prompt options, which you can read here. I chose to take a line from each host’s poem throughout the 30 days, in order, to create a new poem. I took the last line from my poem on the day that I hosted to become the title. Poets’ names are in the order in which their line appears under the poem.
Even Now
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love
a new leaf
our friendship remains
wind whips snow and rain and sleet, stinging our smiling faces
older now, but happy
I am from green sticker grass, speckled with dandelions
twining vines together to be held in the right places
a lullaby for what cannot be undone
you might have ooh’d and aaw’d
to keep the memories
unraveling
to write the tears and cry into absence that hope might
taking me to a different time and place
let us walk in the woods
a truer friend is hard to find, so kind
there will be joy in the morning
mind drifting under periwinkle sky
something like the snowballs we wished to have
knowing we will someday die
nor think the illusion a mirage
warm and bittersweet
everything is ghastly white –
all a reminder that newness brings life
secretly embracing
that this wasn’t really
like my thoughts
in the midst of the storm, it can be hard to see clear
into life’s unknown
and still, I hold onto hope
A huge hug and thank you to these host poets with borrowed lines, in order:
Jennifer, Leilya, Denise, Dave, Bryan, Stacey, Erica, Darius, Britt, Joanne, Kate, Sarah, Padma, Brittany, Katrina, Angie, Tammi, Jordan, Susan, Glenda, Margaret, Barb, Larin, Ashley, Scott, Alexis, Donnetta, Stefani, Sarah/Maureen
I
Scott of Michigan is our host for the 26th day of VerseLove2025, inspiring us to write poems about minor ailments. You can read his full prompt here. He gives these directions:  Choose a minor ailment – I just googled it to find a list – and spend a bit of time with it. Write a poem about it.Â
Blurred Vision Apparition
glancing out the living room
window in the early morning
after a night of fierce storms
I see it ~
there behind a tall pine
its left half still obscured
by the tree
an alien-looking specter
with a long right arm
peering in my window
eyes so real they’re trying
to tell me something
I remove my glasses,
rub each lens between the soft
cotton fold of my pajama shirt
and look again
the apparition is still there
with a sense of urgency
in its eyes
but as the sun rises
I realize
it is only the dry bark
of a tree that
didn’t get rain-saturated
but still
I can’t help wondering
its message
for me
Ashley lives in Titusville, Florida where she works as a high school English teacher.
Today, in the spirit of wishing, she inspires us to write a double dactyl poem. You can read her full prompt here. This whimsical form of poetry is made of two quatrains.
Aucta Schmaucta
Kimberly wishingly
camping glampingly
marsmallowly mellowing
happily hammocking
camping and coffeeing
secretly harboring
Willowy dreams
Jordan, our host for this 19th day of #VerseLove 2025, lives in Suffolk, VA.
She inspires us today to write poems about food.
lots of things I don’t do right in this world
but making a fresh sprout and kale wrap
with beets and a half dollop of
mayonnaise is not one of
them, fortunately ~ and
the difference is
right outside on
the porch where
it grows
fresh
The annual National Poetry Month Kidlit Progressive Poem is well underway, and along with other poets who have added a line before mine, I’m adding one today. Margaret Simon is our host, inviting 30 poets to create a communal poem throughout these 30 days of National Poetry Month.
My line follows Amy’s line from yesterday:
Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air
stippling every dogwood
dappling daffodils with flair
Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming Sweetgum
Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilac and phlox
commune without constraints
Breathe deeply the gifts of lilacs
rejoice in earth’s sweet offerings
feel renewed-give thanks at day’s end
remember long-ago springs
Bask in a royal spring meadow
Tune in tomorrow to see what Margaret Simon adds! You can see the list of poets and their dates below.
April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 6 Buffy Silverman
April 7 Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 10 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainely Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita Davis
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There’s no such thing as a Godforsaken town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors
Our host for Day 16 of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Katrina Morrison, who teaches English and German in a rural community in Osage County, Oklahoma.
Katrina inspires us to write etheree poems and shares her process: “Etheree Taylor Armstong, an Arkansas poet, created the simple eponymous Etheree. An etheree consists of ten lines with each line’s syllabication increasing by one. Line 1 begins with one syllable, line two has two syllables, line three has three syllables, etc. Proceed this way until you have composed a poem with ten lines.” You can read her full prompt here.
The Poetry Fox
have you ever seen a fox type poems
on a classic vintage typewriter
pecking with his paws at the keys
pounding out on-demand verse
for people offering
their favorite words,
then reading each
aloud to
human
hearts?
Padma Venkatraman, our host for Day 14 of VerseLove 2025, is the author of The Bridge Home, Born Behind Bars, A Time to Dance, Island’s End and Climbing the Stairs. Her books have sold over ¼ million copies, received over 20 starred reviews, and won numerous awards: Walter Dean Myers Award, South Asia Book Award, Golden Kite, ALA Notable etc.
Today, she inspires us to read her poem entitled Safe Spaces and think about a place that feels like a safe harbor – and bring that space alive in a poem. You can read her full prompt here.
My friend Margaret Simon, host of Poetry Friday, introduced me to a Shadorma form. I love the short forms, and this one contains six lines with this syllable pattern: 3-5-3-3-7-5. I’m trying this for my safe space poem today.
Safe Harbor Shadorma
safe harbors
places we can breathe
without fear
but tell me ~
do they exist anymore
in this mess of now?
Our host for the 12th day of VerseLove2025 is Kate Sjostrom, a teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
She inspires us to write our favorite literacy memory in a poem. You can read her full prompt here.
I’m sharing a pantoum today – – of the poem that started it all for me…..my deep love of poetry comes down to one poem that mesmerized me and wouldn’t turn loose. It still holds me captive, and it’s the reason I often wear green glass beads…….Overheard on a Salt Marsh, by Harold Monro!
Falling in Love with Harold Monroe
in my closet with a flashlight
reading Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes
I fell in love with Harold
when I was 8
reading Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
when I was 8
Give them me. / No.
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Your green glass beads on a silver ring
Give them me. / NO!
Hush, I stole them out of the moon.
Your green glass beads on a silver ring
I fell in love with Harold
Hush, I stole them out of the moon
in my closet with a flashlight
Our host for the 9th day of #VerseLove2025 is Britt Decker of Houston, Texas, who inspires us to write. a poem about who we were at various times in our lives. You can read her full prompt here. Maybe you’ll come write with us today! I’ve chosen a list poem for today’s poem.
Depending on when you met me, you would have known
I was a wild preacher’s kid running amok with a
cast of characters that weren’t Southern Baptists ~
that I became them in my closet with a flashlight
obsessed with the words, the characters, the places
in Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes
the book with the gold and pink banded spine
where they lived on pages but came alive
in me ~ and stay with me still
I’m Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee
I’m a sugar plum tree at the Lollipop Sea
I’m a little turtle climbing on the rocks
I’m Wee Willie Winkie, crying through the locks
I’m a water nymph with green glass beads
I’m a goblin in the marsh, howling in the reeds
I’m Mary, Mary, quite contrary
I’m a little puffin on an island in the sea
I’m a gypsy, a gypsy, earrings in my ears
I’m a cave boy with a spear hunting prehistoric deer
I’m the Raggedy Man with a wobble-ly calf
I’m the Ice Cream man with a cart full of laughs
I’m Young Melissa sweeping a room
I’m an astronaut….3, ….2,…..1……BOOM!
Common Threads 