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May 1 – My April Goal Update

Since yesterday was the last day of VerseLove for 2023, I decided to make May 1 my official personal goal update day for April. For the past two months, I have participated in both the Slice of Life Challenge and VerseLove, writing daily with those groups and responding to the writing of others. Tomorrow I’ll return to daily blog poetry and stories, but for today, I pause to reflect on my progress on my yearly goals and establish a couple of new ones.

CategoryGoalsMy Progress
LiteratureRead Around the USA
Give Away Books Reorganize books
Send out Postcards
Blog Daily		I’ve read three books with the Book Girls Read Across the USA Challenge, and I’m continuing to read across the USA – – just on my own timetable and from my own choices. I’ll continue on this goal and log it on the map throughout the year.
I have given away enough books for the time being. I have extra shelves, and I’ve decided to reorganize before giving more books away (this goal shifts to reorganizing now).
I’m still sending out postcards each month. I enjoy the quick writes and the reminder to look for postcards wherever I go.
I continue to blog daily.
CreativityImprove blog photos
Indulge in photo excursions
Create photo montage
Flower Press during May
Refinish my kitchen table		During April, I created a Progressive Poetry Walk around our courthouse square where I live, and also created minilessons, with QR Codes and poetry stations throughout our county to celebrate National Poetry Month. I have offered poetry writing workshops and recorded poets reading their poems, and framed the QR Code links where people could view them. I have a new phone that helps with blog photo improvement and have discovered that photo excursions? They are opportunities to seize every day, more discovery than quest.
Since my photo montage is temporarily as complete as I need it to be, I’m establishing a new creativity goal this month: flower pressing. I’m gathering and pressing over the month of May as flowers start to bloom and everything bursts with color. These will be used to press between glass frames and also to send botanical notecards. I’ll also strip and paint my kitchen table and chairs.
SpiritualityTune in to church
Pray!
Keep OLW priority		We tune in where Dad is preaching on Sundays (First Baptist Church of YouTube) or a church he regularly preaches in.
I continue to honor my OLW by making my drive to work my prayer chamber.
ReflectionWrite family stories
Spend time tracking goals each month		I’m writing some family stories, but this month has been particularly devoted to poetry, so I’ll resume more stories in May. I am tracking goals diligently and need to spend some time this month establishing new ones. I’ll share those in May.
Self-ImprovementReach top of weight range
Maintain Weight
Give away too-big clothes		I reached the weight goal and then got comfortable. Life happened. Yes, I’m beating myself up a little, but tomorrow is the day to jump back up on the wagon. It’ll be May 1 and time to hop back on Optavia and get to the goal. Once I reach it, my solid plan is to transition to Weight Watchers for counting points and adopting a more sustainable eating plan. I’m still not to the goal of maintaining – but I am leaving this goal in place. That is obviously the challenging part.
Giving away too-big clothes – I’m eliminating this, as I think I’m where I will be for the long haul.
I’m thinking of publishing a volume of poetry, so I’m looking at The Book Patch as a self-publishing option. I’ll attend a session with Sarah and writers from ethicalela to discuss another publishing option with our poems we have published on http://www.ethicalela.com during VerseLove and Open Writes.
GratitudeDevote blog days to counting blessingsI began the month on a fishing trip with my firstborn grandson and ended the month with him at our house for a sleepover. I spent time with all the grandchildren in early April. I also spent time helping my brother with a family project this month.
ExperienceEmbrace Slow Travel
Focus on the Outdoors		We made a decision to sell the Keystone Outback and keep the Little Guy Max, so we sold the large camper on Easter Sunday! We have erected a purple martin house and a bat house to help with our mosquito populations to avoid using pesticides that may harm other flora and fauna in the funny farm ecosystem. We are working on the bird and butterfly gardens, adding a few nectar plants adjacent to the host plant area (strictly fennel) and tracking birds that come to our feeders. I also added two solar fountain spinners to our birdbaths to give the birds moving water that they love. We have a chair and a half that is a nice way to relax in the evenings, watching birds and processing the day in conversation and hot tea by the bird garden window. We began official plans for vacation: driving half of Route 66.
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#VerseLove April 30

Sarah Donovan is our host for Day 30 of VerseLove and our host of this space each month for writers who crave togetherness each month as we come together to celebrate our words and thoughts ~to share the joy of writing. She helps meet a deep need in each of us. I adore the prompt today, and I ran for my journal from 2019 when I saw the topic. I thought back to the first year I participated in VerseLove and looked for that first prompt that changed the trajectory of my life from grief over my mother’s death to connection with others whose pain shone through their heart holes, too, who showed me how to use the sunspots to write and heal. To every writer who shares the journey, thank you for all of the inspiration you bring. This morning, my grandson writes along with me as I revise my first-ever VerseLove poem, Blackberry Winter.

Blackberry Winter, Revisited

It’s a Blackberry Winter I wrote in 2019
beginning a poem about all the good things

later this morning, my first grandson 
               will make elderberry jam toast
                         plus cheese omelettes 
                                   on the Lodge cast iron griddle
   wearing my apron 
         (he doesn’t know about the apron yet)

but first: raindrops on rooftop, fresh coffee,
wi-fi (stronger than coffee, finally), computer charged,
comfy chair, whisper-soft pajamas,

thoughts ready to materialize
three schnoodles tussling on grandson’s 
sleepover mattress as we write together
in the living room

words forming on pages: his pen, my keyboard
to the first #VerseLove prompt of 2019 from Sarah:

….the good things in our lives….

there are those who bring
more warmth than raindrops and coffee,
more comfort than chairs and pajamas,
more joy than words ~ 
   ancestors whose cast iron presence
      and apron strings linger in kitchens
       hugging us tight about the middle

and those we ancestor ~ grandchildren 
who write right next to us
about all the good things in our lives
on this elderberry toast and cheese omelette morning.

– Kim Haynes Johnson, April 2, 2019 and 4/30/2023

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#VerseLove April 29

Our host today for Day 29 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Scott McCloskey of Michigan, who inspires us to rewrite the script of a time we wish we’d given a different answer. You can read his prompt and the poems of others here. 

Kernels of Truth


ten months after

she died

four months after

he died

you asked me

what I thought

of y’all



and I told the truth



you’re nice

she’s nice

but y’all don’t fit



you thought

it was that woman thing

that I 

just didn't like her



you had it all wrong



there were those

I thought would be a

great fit for you



readers

travelers

lovers of wine

whose blood runneth blue



this one wasn’t for you



you’ve held my 

truth-telling 

against me all this time

made me the 

unaccepting one



and now after

seven years

of frustration

figuring out

discovering

you finally realize

all those reasons

y’all don’t fit



so next time I’ll

tell the only truth

you want to hear



marry her



then I’ll go 

make popcorn
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#VerseLove April 27

Today our host for #VerseLove is Chea of Texas, who inspires us to write poetry with regional dialect ~ to tell something as it really happened, in our home language. You can read her prompt and the poetry of others here. I’m sharing a phone conversation with my dad one early morning not too long ago and wrote it in prose during the Slice of Life Story Challenge. 

Hopin' Folks Out

my phone rings early 
Dad

I have a story I need to tell 
while it’s fresh on my mind
before I forget

I grab my pen

It was back in the old days in rural Georgia 
when I was preaching at Ohoopee
This was down around Highway 19
where you’d go through Wrightsville
meander over to Tennille
and then head on out to Sandersville
a sea of cotton fields  
roads all red clay

Ohoopee was a church of miracles
a cured drunk who loved the Lord led the singin'
“On Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” 
only he pronounced it Jurdan’s.
and he weren’t wrong.

a fellow named Noah in the church 
needed help finding 
where to dig his well
even with a name like Noah

back in those days
people were people 
folks’ existence was all about 
helpin' their neighbors out

now 
old Elvis heard about it
“I’m coming over to hope you out” 

I went over there too
to see Elvis hope his neighbor out

Elvis said he had a divinin'  rod – 
a hickory branch –  to find water 
Elvis walked  
it tremored
I saw it with my own eyes
they dug that well right there

they called this place Possum Scuffle
back over in Harrison by Raines Store 
over yonder by Deep Step and Goat Town
by Margaret Holmes's cannery ~
black eyed peas and collards. 

 in Acts 27
Luke is in a ship in a storm 
using stabilizing ropes 
~ also hawsers or helps
a help is a hope rope
on land or at sea
it's Biblical, Kim

now
you remember that

write it down
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#VerseLove April 26

Our host today for Day 26 of #VerseLove is Donnetta Norris of Arlington, Texas, who inspires us to write borrowed line poems. You can read her full prompt and the poetry of others here. Today, I’m choosing a line from Mary Oliver’s The Gift: that held only the eventual, inevitable and dropping the word eventual.

Family Bible from Photostock 
Family Bible

I close the worn book  
haunting family secrets
manifesting truths

that hold only the
inevitable shocking
revelations: pasts
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#VerseLove April 24 with Susie Morice

Today is Day 24 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, and Susie Morice is our host. She inspires us to write poems using a junk drawer to determine things about who we are. You can read her full prompt and the poems of others here. I chose to write about the treasure I found in someone else’s junk dogs.

Fitz
These Three Kings

I found three castoffs
betrayed, neglected, abused
I crowned these three kings
Boo Radley
Ollie, “the baby” who is always ready to play
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#VerseLove April 23 – with Alexis Ennis

Alexis Ennis is our host today for #VerseLove, inspring us to write poems about historical figures. You can read her full prompt here. I chose Teddy Roosevelt’s firstborn child as my figure.

TR’s diary entry Valentine’s Day when both his mother and wife died, one upstairs, one downstairs. 
 As a preacher's kid (we seem to have a reputation to live down to, and I've always done my best to keep the trouble going), I was a reader drawn to the troublemakers like Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch in children's literature and Alice Roosevelt in biographies.  So that favorite interview question about whom I'd bring back if I could go to lunch with anyone?  Yeah, mine was always Alice Roosevelt, with footnotes about how she and I would have surely landed in jail together, cellmates somewhere for some crazy idea we hatched.  She had her own eye color named for her (and the US Navy uses this color named for her on its insignia).  So much more to tell about her, but here's the seed-starter packet:  



Eyes of Alice Blue



not under MY roof

her father TR told her

of smoking her cigs



she puffed on the roof

her snake Emily Spinach

there too, in her purse



no Taft supporter~

a murrain on him! she raged

blue eyes her namesake



what a character!

completely out of control

she fascinates me!



come sit by me if

you don’t have something nice to

say about someone!



born two days before

mom died upstairs, grandma down

under the same roof



death clouded her birth,

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

lived in those shadows



For Alice Roosevelt Longworth 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/from-a-white-house-wedding-to-a-pet-snake-alice-roosevelts-escapades-captivated-america-180981139/
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#VerseLove April 22 – with Emily

Emily is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 22 of #VerseLove.

Today is Earth Day, and Emily encourages us to write about an island of our choice. I grew up on two islands – one in Georgia, one in South Carolina. I love today’s topic, because I’m back on St. Simons today spiffing up our rental unit here, remembering my youth softball league playing in the ballpark across the street, walking the village where I crabbed on the pier with my mother. It’s a perfect day to enjoy the island vibe with three out of control schnoodles who can’t get enough of all the salty sea smells.

St. Simons Island, Georgia

Childhood
Memories splash
Time-faded photographs
Redigitized to present-day
Beach walks

sea smells
salty schnoodles
savoring Saturday
still snoozing, sunrise sand dune soon
spoiled sons