Patchwork Prose and Verse
This month, I’m writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Today we’re inspired to think of a character and write about him/her/them, telling who they are.
all this fiction
all this drama
these problems
these feelings
these backstabbers
these bullshitters
are bigger in life
than they ever
were between any pages
This month, I’m sharing some of Dad’s conversations in his final days, and in one of them that you can hear at the bottom of this post, he revealed a surprising thought about how we feel about folks from time to time. His revelation reminded me of a poem that I wrote recently for a small group of women in one of my writing circles.
My Stafford Challenge group meets the first Monday of each month by Zoom to chat and write together, and we’re a group of women who enjoy reading as much as writing. I’ve been writing a form each month called Gift Basket writing, where I choose three things I’d give a person in a gift basket for that month. This one is dedicated especially to my Stafford Writing Group sisters – Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. At the time I wrote this, I’d recently stumbled across a book club I’d love to join, even for the name alone, and there is actually a summer camp in Maine for its readers – this is a real thing. My dream summer is going to this book club’s summer camp, and I’ve added it to the bucket list.
Bad Bitch Book Club
if I were giving you
a gift basket
I’d make it a
Bad Bitch gift basket
to welcome the storms
of the world~
you’d receive
a t-shirt that says
BAD BITCH BOOK CLUB
complete with
a membership to
the Bad Bitch Book Club
(yes ~ it’s a real thing
with its own dot com)
and a mirror
so you’ll always
see the
baddest of the kick-ass bad
right in the palm of your hand~
knowing your Bad Bitch sisters
have your back!
It’s okay to have a BB attitude sometimes……even my preacher Dad in his final days confessed that there are times we are all a little bit badass. You can listen here:
Dad told the Secret to Happiness story best and referenced it often in his sermons. In the photo below, the fairy fable from Leo Buscaglia’s Loving Each Other is one he took to heart. He was always meeting the needs of others, always illustrating lessons through stories. This month, I’m sharing some of the audio clips I recorded as my brother and I talked with him in his final days. His words live on.
secrets lie within
the pages of obscure books
read widely: you’ll see
who better
to lead our nation
than the ones
who built it:
caring women and men with
strong humanity?
Today’s Shadorma was inspired by Dad’s views on women in leadership roles. You can listen below to his story he shared about the power of women in ministry, words from the heart spoken by our Southern Baptist father as told to his two Southern Baptist children (one of us is currently married to a member of the Catholic faith, and one of us formerly was) in his final days of life. The thing about Dad was his love for others. ALL others, even those who believed differently from him. His full embrace of humanity far exceeded differences of religion, politics, sexual orientation, and race. He even loved those who didn’t like Georgia Bulldog football or the Atlanta Braves.
It all had something to do with the way his mother demonstrated this first. He learned from her. Take a listen:
My friend Margaret Simon of Louisiana is always inspiring me to try new forms. We write with several overlapping writing groups. Margaret hosts Poetry Friday and This Photo Wants to Be a Poem, organizes Spiritual Thursdays, blogs with Slice of Life, hosts and writes for EthicalELA during #VerseLove and the monthly Open Writes, and is a member of the Stafford Challenge. She has also published several books, and we presented a poetry writing workshop together in April at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. She recently posted that the Poetry Sisters had written Raccontino poems, which are couplets of any number where the even-numbered lines end on the same rhyme and the title is expressed in the last words of the odd-numbered lines. I raise a glass to my writing friend Margaret today. You can follow her on her blog Reflections on the Teche.
Family Vacations
packing suitcases ~ memories to make
experiencing life before we leave
there is no better way to spend our time
than taking a trip ~ a welcome reprieve
from routine demands, a fortress built for
placing importance in what we believe
things we can only learn as we travel
(like setting aside our personal peeves)
savoring now, embracing family
holding presence as belonging we weave
interlocking fingers: togetherness
fastening futures ~ no regrets to grieve
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
Common Threads 