Patchwork Prose and Verse
in my quasi sleep mode
where he kisses me goodbye
before leaving for work
he whispered
be careful when you open the door
there’s a mouse trying to get in
because that’s what happens on a farm
when even the field mouse have had it
with the scorching heat of summer
which prompted deep sleep dreams
of a mouse with a tiny suitcase
because his car ran out of gas
selling encyclopedias
running from a snake
proclaiming his testimony
asking for a glass of water
hoping to find a new home
repositioning
makes all the sleep difference
in a tiny space
We’re teardrop camper fans who downsized from a 30 foot Keystone Outback to a 21 foot Little Guy Max to scale back and simplify our camping experiences. As primarily weekend campers, we don’t like to make camping a production with every gizmo and gadget. We like to spend time off the grid, using what we have to make do – – and we certainly don’t like to cook and wash a lot of dishes while we’re busy sitting around doing nothing.
Our favorite way to travel is to stumble across a sudden cancelled reservation on a campground and decide spur-of-the-moment to throw together a couple of pairs of shorts and t-shirts and whatever food happens to be in the kitchen and hook up the camper and go. Unplanned. Last minute. Spontaneously seeking an adventure that was not going to happen ten minutes ago. Not a five-star hotel with a restaurant and pool, not a cruise cabin with a balcony or a VRBO with a hot tub.
From the moment we brought her home, we loved this sweet little tiny space. It may look small, but it has all we need, including a wet bath (combination shower/toilet room) and a stargazer window. It has seven windows, a Fantastic fan, a clothes closet and pantry, and a tv in the front for watching church or for when it rains and in back for movies before bed.
But what we didn’t love was the bed. Even though the previous owners had upgraded the original mattress, we still woke up with hip and backaches and never could get quite comfortable enough for a full night’s rest. One of us (me) had to climb over the other one to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and two adults and three dogs in a queen size bed was not working.
That’s when we decided to modify the bed. We designed a plan to extend the sleeping space into the belly of the camper to allow more room. Here’s what we did:
First, we measured the height we’d need to extend the bed out. We ordered four 17-inch step stools for support on four corners of a one-inch Lagun table we already had and placed the table hardware-side-down in the middle of the stools.
Next, we measured the cushion width we’d need and saw that the cushions from the front table would work if doubled-up, so we added two on the bottom and two more on top of those cushions to level the cushion surface flush with the mattress and foam topper.
Since there appear to be no T-shaped sheets anywhere, we added a separate fitted sheet over the cushions and each took one sheet and one blanket to cover our space as we repositioned, eliminating any cover thieves who may be lurking with an eye to steal the other’s covers in the dead of night.
We think we’ve found the solution that will allow us to keep this camper for a longer time before we try another camper. We’re keeping careful notes of what we like and don’t like, but for now we think we’ve adapted a winner. And the only purchase we had to make, the step stools, double as chair-side coffee tables and foot props for when we’re in the camp chairs outside doing absolutely nothing.
toasted Gregg’s Peach Bread
fresh from the orchard nearby
slathered with butter
rarely do I ever
get to see true
hold my beer
moments as I
did last week
we’d just finished
dinner when a
dad waiting for
a table took his
baby on a shoulder
ride through the
parking lot,
stopping over the
grate to pretend
to dump the kid
in the hole
he didn’t dump the
kid, he lost his
air pods ~ the case
fell from his pocket,
one pod from his ear
he took the baby back
to the mama and
returned with a buddy
who set down his
beer and went
in the hole for
the retrieval
the old lady in me
was nervous so
I stood in the road
to warn oncoming
cars that there was
a crisis in the manhole
and just like that
the pods were back
in his ears and their
table was ready
every few days
I have the urge
to sell everything
we own and move
into the camper with
two plates, two forks,
and two spoons
and share a knife~
to retire, take to
the highways, see
the changing landscape
of America, pulling
our flatware and
plates from
site to site
no particular place to be
no pressing deadline to meet
then I come to my senses
trying to reckon with the
reality of the silverware
drawer and all those
cabinets.
Day 6
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing ~
our Boo
forced a threatening
brown bull to retreat
to turn tail
and
take to the woods
or was that his intention?
was he a charger of bulls
or was he a shepherd
of cows?
was he herding them
back in their farm direction
because he knew they
were lost, drifters one
farm south of theirs,
needing a nudge?
this is, after all
the Funny Farm,
where you have
to be a little
sideways to end
up here in the
land of the
unexpected
where wrinkles in
perceptions become
realities like this:
Boo Radley is a
shepherding schnoodle
of lost herds, the
meanest bulls not
excluded, because
he knows how it feels
to be lost, looking
for home, aggressively
persuading them not
to give up a good thing
all this brings back
the day we were
on the beach
late afternoon
on a cloudy day
sipping wine
on a blanket
when two women
much further into
their bottle
walked by us too close
to our beach campout
according to Boo
Boo corrected
them
~not politely~
and in their swagger,
in their smirks,
their chuckles,
one taunted back:
oh, what a little badass!
fast forward
the years
to today and I
want to go back
to that moment
and say
yes ma’am,
he certainly is!
he fulfilled the
prophesy at the bottom
of your
wine bottle
you saw the future
of our little rescue
Schnoodle named
Boo Radley~
a champion badass
herder of bulls
you weren’t bullshitting
I was mad since you
were late so I fed turtles
all your marshmallows
no roasting for you
our discussion was our campfire
spark, flame, sizzle, blaze
they smiled and thanked me
reminded me to tell you
to keep slowing down.
Kevin Hodgson of Massachussetts is our host for Day 24 of #VerseLove. You can read his full prompt here.
Kevin says, “Ada Limon’s amazing poem for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission – In Praise of Mystery: A Poem For Europa – often lingers in my mind, particularly as its launch into space is on the horizon in October. The sky is full of inspiration as is the mission of discovery. Her poem has me thinking of constellations, in particular, and how people across time, in different geographic places, have so often gazed up at the night sky and sought connections between the pinpoints of light, and told stories and created poems, and shared experiences.”
Kevin urges us to “consider a constellation as a starting point for a poem. Here is a list of the 88 “official” constellations.”
Connecting the Dots (Lepus the Hare)
on the screen
a couple hops
off a train
in Vienna for
an evening together
strangers taking
a chance on love
~before sunrise~
a palm reader
ambles over in
her flowing dress
and head wrap to
read their destinies
when the stars exploded
billions of years ago
they formed everything
that is this world
everything we know
is stardust, so
don’t forget:
you are stardust…..
you are both stars
then she walks off
into the night
where they go, too,
to do more-than-
stranger-things
before he recites
an Auden poem
the years shall
run like rabbits...
and so I
connect the
dots….{Lepus!}
because
As I Walked Out
One Evening
I saw them
yes, I saw
those rabbits
running like years
through the
meadows of heaven
through this
grassland galaxy
through this
Royal Fortress Meadow
Barb Edler of Iowa is our host today for the 13th day of #VerseLove2024, inspiring us to use a brain dump process to craft a poem. You can read her full prompt and the poems and comments of others here.
My role as the District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools in Georgia involves utilizing grant funds to create Literacy events to ignite reading and writing passion in our schools and throughout our community. When my soul sister Fran Haley of North Carolina posted about The Poetry Fox visiting her school years ago, I tucked that thought away as a dream to bring him from her school event in Zebulon, North Carolina to our coffee shop in Zebulon, Georgia to work his magic, sitting at his table in a fox suit, pounding out poems on his vintage typewriter for folks who stand in line to offer him their word.
He made that 7 hour trip this week from his home in Durham, NC and produced nearly 60 poems between 3:00 and 6:15, delighting people of all ages and from all walks of life – funeral directors who gave the words tears and gravestones, a pilot who offered the word sky, children who offered all sorts of words from monster truck to axolotl, teenagers who brought the words hooligan and baseball, and a librarian who brought the word library – and so many more! I’ve included the list of words in a photo at the bottom of this post. My words were royal fortress meadow since my name, Kimberly, means from the royal fortress meadow.
After three hours of writing poems, he packed up his fox suit and walked down to the barbecue restaurant on our town square and had a barbecue sandwich, baked beans, and banana pudding with me. When we returned at 7:00, he shared a delightful hour telling us about who he is, what he does, and how he came to do it. Beyond watching him work, there is as much amazement in the person of Chris Vitiello as there is the jaw-dropping magic of….
The Poetry Fox!
I. The Suit
there must have been
some magic in that old
fox suit they found
for when he placed it
on his head
keys began to dance around
to swirl up typewriter dust
conjuring the memories
reaching deep for connections
once forgotten, resurrected now
in the deep recesses of minds
and souls
the piercings of heartstrings by
moments of life
summoning past
awakening present
cultivating future
pounded out with two fingers
often superglued for
tenderness support
a suit ~
left behind, abandoned, forgotten
given as a gift by a
friend who knew the quirky depths
of brilliance in THE one who would
wear it best
II. The Roots
because as a kid
he read newspapers
enjoyed the flapping of paper
and the words they held, and
this future fox word volleyed
(forget board games – he played word games)
with friends
to build schema
set egg timers and each wrote 5 poems
all about one word
that had to be different from any other
with his knees against a heater
where his desk sat
the heat rising as the breath
of a boy who would someday
write to the tune of sweat
in a toasty fox costume
III. The Pursuit
and every day live out
his dream of writing
his love of meaning
his incessant hunger
for the exchange of words
for the gift of poetry
this soul-spark of wonder
when words touch places
long ignored
and breath catches
and tears well and spill
and loved ones lost return, smiling
between the lines
and children laugh
because the clever fox
explains in all logic
through poetry
that people don’t
make monster trucks ~
monsters do
and people aren’t the
only ones who write poems
foxes do, too
Denise Krebs of California is our host today for #VerseLove2024. She inspires us to write List Poems. You can read her full prompt here. I’ve added some pictures, just for fun – – a quick glimpse of our wedding weekend on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where my brother Ken and his bride Jennifer were wed on Saturday afternoon. Narrowing it down to the top ten – – that was a tough challenge!
I love a list poem because it doesn’t have to rhyme, it can be random, and it can be completely out of order or it can run in a countdown fashion to the top of the list. Mine is random, and it’s a photographic prose list poem, a blend of all my favorite kinds. I could not pick a single favorite moment.
Top 10 Wedding Weekend Moments
Straight-from-the-soul smiles on my brother and his bride’s faces, so full of happiness and love,
meeting my brother’s new family and feeling both sides merge into one big family,
getting a new sister-in-law,
placing flowers on the altar in memory of our mothers,
seeing the shoes of my son and husband and feeling them lift me up when I fell,
watching the dads dance – one with a cane, one with bionic knees, but believe it: these two can groove,
watching my brother watch the love of his life come down the aisle,
spending time with extended family and close family (5 of our 6 grandchildren),
figuring out how to win the dinner bill argument with my son since I own nearly one million shares of Shiba Inu (only worth about $25.00 total at .00002 a share, but hey – – it worked),
playing and having a picnic in the parks and hearing my 5 year old grandson’s response when I tried to tell him my ice cream was mashed potatoes and he took the folded arm stance and firmly stated, “that’s impossible!” (they all got ice cream).
Common Threads 