Thanks to Susie Morice for the inspiration to write a poem about a favorite car on today’s Open Write. I chose the nonet form, a poem with 9 syllables on the top line, with descending syllables on each line thereafter. A reverse nonet goes from 1-9. My favorite car was a Volkswagen Squareback I learned to drive on the back roads in the late 70s, and then became legally licensed to drive in 1981….oh, the days…..
You can visit the site and read her prompt and the car poems of others here throughout the day: http://www.ethicalela.com/cars/
Today I’m hosting the Open Write at ethicalela.com, so I’m sharing my prompt for paint chip poems. A special thanks to Sarah Donovan for her leadership and space at ethicalela. Please visit the site throughout the day and read the colorful poems that come to life at http://www.ethicalela.com/paint-chip-poetry/
but you can also find your own colorful words for free at paint stores or on websites such as Sherwin Williams here: https://www.sherwin-williams.com or Glidden here: https://www.glidden.com by clicking on the color chips to discover vibrant color words (deep onyx, copper pot, heartfelt, hot cocoa, dirt road…)
Process: Gather some paint chip words from a website or a paint department and have fun arranging the descriptive colors into lines of poetry!
Example using colors that I selected from Paint Chip Poetry:
I’m hosting today at Open Write. Please visit http://www.ethicalela.com/multiple-shovels/ throughout the day to read the poems of a group of talented teacher writers who truly empower each other with encouragement and positive feedback. If you are an educator – homeschool teacher, retired teacher, instructor in any setting – please join us monthly at the Open Write to read our work or to write with us!
I’m sharing my prompt today for the process of writing Golden Shovel variations here on my blog as well on this day that we set aside to remember the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his leadership in the fight for civil rights. In the past few years, I have accompanied a group of middle school students to Selma, Alabama, where we visited the churches where he spoke. My favorite memory from one of those trips was walking with the students over the Edmund Pettus Bridge as the chorus teacher led the students in singing We Shall Overcome. The spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lives on, alive and well in our world today. I’m grateful for this day to reflect on his courage and bravery and his legacy of activism.
Inspiration
Multiple Shovels
One of our favorite previous forms to write is the Golden Shovel poem. Today, let’s try different versions of the Golden Shovel – a Golden Shovel, Double Shovel, or Multiple Shovel. We can begin with single or double shovels (vertical spine lines at beginning or end, beginning/middle, middle/end, or beginning/end), and later experiment with triple/quadruple/quintuple shovels (vertical lines appearing at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end) once familiar with the Golden Shovel form.
Process: Begin by selecting lines of poetry (or lines from a famous speech, perhaps, as we celebrate the accomplishments of and reflect on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today) with the same number of words, and write the lines vertically (I call them spine lines). You can decide whether each spine line fits best as a beginning, middle, or end spine. Next, craft the lines of a new poem around the spine lines you have selected.
Example: Here is a Double Golden Shovel that uses spine lines at the beginning and end – comprised of two seven-word sections found in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech:
When Will One Day Come? (Title chosen by Dr. Wilson Felix Haynes, Jr. – my dad)
There are multiple shovel poems throughout October 2021 and some in October 2020 that you can find in the search feature as well, although some did not convert from Blogger to WordPress in the correct format.
Special thanks to Sarah J. Donovan of http://www.ethicalela.com for offering the Open Write each month as a safe and supportive space for us to write. I hope to meet many more of my family of writers at this year’s NCTE Conference in Anaheim, where I hope to present Mashed Potato poetry in a roundtable session, showing how even the most reluctant writers can compose poetry without lifting a pencil! Mashed Potato poetry uses a bank of borrowed lines already written on tongue depressors, with lines of poetry on one side and poets and poems on the back. You can see an example here: https://kimhaynesjohnson.com/2021/10/22/stars/
Stacey Joy challenged our writing group to write monotetra poems today at the Open Write at Ethical ELA, which you can visit here: http://www.ethicalela.com/monotetr/
She writes, “The monotetra is a poetic form developed by Michael Walker consisting of mono-rhymed quatrains with a refrain. It can be only one quatrain or as many as you choose to write. Each line consists of 8 syllables.”
I look forward to hosting the next two days at Open Write, where we will explore variations of Golden Shovel and Paint Chip poems.
Beneath Implied
listening takes more than clean ears listening’s more than what one hears it may mean one exposes fears it evokes tears, it evokes tears
to listen takes an open heart to listen may bring a fresh start or may rejoin things torn apart wisdom impart, wisdom impart
listen! healing lives deep inside listen! heart and soul open wide expressed truths within us abide beneath implied, beyond implied
Many thanks to Sarah J. Donovan for her work at EthicalELA, for continuing to provide a safe and challenging space for us to enjoy.
I can’t think of a more powerful way to begin the 2022 Open Write than with poetry written by Stacey Joy and Kwame Alexander – two of my favorite poets to read! Stacey challenges us to write list poems to start the year. The link to her prompt is below. Beginning 2022 with a list poem reminds us that poetry can be free of rules and forms – it’s breath and thought and heart all blended in expression.
My one not so little word for 2022 is listen, so I made a starter kit of some ways I’ve discovered I can listen without using the word hear.
I was the band director and the chorus teacher for two hours today at the high school. Overall, things did not go so well.
First, I can’t read music. Second, I can’t sing.
I went from a morning of covering a high school history class and testing preschoolers’ Literacy skills to an afternoon of sheer cacophony surrounded by brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments I knew nothing about.
In the midst of this surreal assignment, I looked up and smiled and thought of my one little word I’d chosen for 2022: listen. And as I did, it occurred to me that others might want to listen, too.
I texted a few 15-second audio clips to my closest people with no accompanying explanation.
“Wow, what was that?” my husband replied.
“It’s my band class. I’m directing,” I informed him.
“Oh my goodness, that’s hilarious,” he texted back.
“What in the world?” from my daughter.
“It’s my band class. I’m directing,” I told her.
She was amused. “Hahaha! Directing? Or do you mean telling the band to play something reminiscent of a Disney movie set in the Great Depression that was decades before their time?”
Another family member was so concerned that he tried calling, but I couldn’t answer in class.
“I’m busy directing the band today. I’ll have to call you when I’m headed back to the office,” I told him.
“Oh dear,” another replied. “I’m going to need video evidence.”
And so I got it.
So that for the rest of 2022 when I need to think of the most unusual way I listened on the 13th day of the year, I can revisit this experience and be ever mindful that the words we choose for the year can truly take us to some places we never dreamed we’d be.
My childhood church on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where my father has served as pastor twice throughout his career, is the place where I began my life as a Christian and was baptized as a child. Thanks to modern technology, I can virtually attend my childhood church, even though I live five hours away. Kyle Keese, the current interim pastor, in his sermon on January 9 , 2022 (I’ve linked it at the bottom of this post), shared his story of a conversation with two friends who were attending a reunion church service. One of the friends revealed that he had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and the other friend encouraged him to blog the journey. To share the story as a gift and blessing– to learn something about who he was, but more importantly, to learn more about who God was and how his faith sustained him in the midst of the pain.
I’d been late tuning in to the service, but as I began listening, How Firm a Foundation was the hymn being sung by the congregation. These words sung at my mother’s funeral were a nudge to lift my listening ears and open my mind and heart to hear the message that I needed to hear: share the story of a firm foundation and the difference it makes.
For a couple of years now, my prayer has been to find opportunities to share my family’s journey through a daughter’s addiction. I hadn’t anticipated another daughter on the road to recovery as I prayed, but as a mother who prays for my children’s health and safety daily, I could only rejoice as she came clean with her need for help – with her readiness to do the work she knows it will take. I thought of the conversation between these men, and the way our own family experience could be a gift to bless others with encouragement along the way.
My father, just last week, expressed his own desire to share our story so that others who are traveling through the back-alley-darkness of a family member’s addiction will realize that they are not alone – that there is hope – that it takes tough love and ceaseless prayer and unflappable faith when these shadows fall across our paths.
He shared that he’d once set his planned sermon aside and, led by the Holy Spirit in a different direction that day, spoken candidly to the congregation about our pain and our faith – and our blessings – in the midst of the road that we traveled. He spoke of the people who came alongside us, angelic friends, with resources and guidance to shed light on us even as we didn’t yet know all that we didn’t know. And as people left the service that day, he realized through the many similar stories shared with him that we have a responsibility to share because others have a need to hear how God uses our trials to shine His glory and pours out blessings along the way.
“I’ve never been one to set the sermon aside and tarry off course. But I felt led, so I did, and I understood as I stood at the door when people were leaving that the story needed to be shared – because so many people are struggling and need to hear that they are not alone – that there is hope,” he reflected.
My prayer remains to keep a steadfast faith, to listen and obey, and to allow the lyrics of my mother’s favorite hymn – the last notes of music to ever fall on her ears – to carry forth as a light in a dark, painful world – to share the message that others need to hear:
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent word! What more can He say than to you He hath said— To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
“Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismayed, For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand.
“When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow; For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply; The flame shall not harm thee; I only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
“The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose, I will not, I will not, desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” (-Author unknown except by letter K-)
One of my parents’ favorite things to do in the years before Mom grew too frail with Parkinson’s Disease was walk. St. Simon’s Island, (Go Dawgs!) Georgia offered adventure on every outing – on their familiar street routes through the Spanish moss oak-draped neighborhoods, in the ballpark where I played softball as a child, on the sidewalks of the village and down the pier where our mother taught my brother and me how to crab, and along the beaches.
They found things – mostly coins and an occasional dollar bill, but sometimes they found tourists’ random belongings, too. Mom had a knack for such fortuitous finds- and Dad still takes morning sweeps of the island to see what it’s offering up for grabs these days, no doubt shadowed by her guiding presence. Just as every islander knows, if you walk the beach on an outgoing tide early in the morning, there’s no telling what you might discover that has washed up on shore.
On my 49th birthday in July 2015, my parents gave me a silver St. Simon’s Island bracelet from the St. Simon’s Jewelry Company. It has two intertwining S letters, and whether you’re a native islander or visit St. Simon’s Island for vacation, these bracelets are all the rage. They also have rings, earrings, and pendants to match, but the bracelets are by far the most popular pieces.
I still remember opening my gift at the kitchen table. It came in a navy blue box with silver lettering – St. Simon’s Jewelry Co. It fit perfectly, even on my bigger-boned wrist – the one I broke right there in the neighborhood back in third grade when I fell off a ladder climbing up to the roof of Candy Pruitt’s house. How could a simple silver bracelet evoke such rich memories of the places of my childhood – the trees, the beaches, Neptune Park, church…..back when the world was a safer, simpler place? I carry the island with me every time I wear it. Oh, how I’ve treasured it from the moment I first slipped it on – even before I knew it would be the last birthday gift in my mother’s lifetime.
Then, sometime in the late summer of 2015 as she and Dad were walking on the beach one morning, Mom found a St. Simon’s ring washed up on the shore.
“We’ll give it to Kim,” she told Dad, excited about her serendipitous find, “to match her bracelet!”
She put the ring in a top chest drawer and asked Dad to help her remember to give it to me the next time I came. Since she suffered from Lewy Body Dementia, she was vigilant about sharing her wishes with Dad when she was fully present in the moment so that she could rest assured that he knew what to do when her tomorrows stopped coming.
But her disease progressed much more quickly in the final stages than any of us had predicted. Though I made the five hour trip home several times in the months before she died, the ring was the last thing on Dad’s mind, and Mom was rarely cognizant of much in her final months. She died in December as we held hands around her bed in the very room where the ring still rested in the drawer.
A few months after her funeral, Dad came for a visit. I could tell he had something on his mind.
“I’m not suggesting anything here,” he began, taking the silver ring out of his pocket and placing it on the kitchen counter. He stopped short of finishing his sentence, wringing his hands, wiping his brow, and pausing for a moment before he continued.
“I don’t know how to explain this, Kim, but your mom put this ring in a drawer and asked me to help her remember to give it to you. I haven’t thought of this ring in months, but as I was walking up her wheelchair ramp in the garage, I looked down – – and there it was, right in the middle of the ramp.”
Chill bumps ran across my shoulders. She’d known he was coming to visit me, and she worked from the other side to help him remember to bring the ring. Our eyes misty with tears, I took the ring and placed it on my finger to find it was a perfect fit. Dad shared the story of their walk on the beach the morning she’d found it, how she was so thrilled that I’d have a ring to match the bracelet.
Even more miraculous, perhaps, is that most of my jewelry was stolen in 2021, and only a few pieces remained – among them, my cherished St. Simon’s bracelet and ring.
I’m not suggesting anything here…..but it wouldn’t surprise me if those pieces had actually been among the stolen items…….and that somehow they’d made yet another mysterious, unexplainable journey home to me.
At least that’s what I choose to believe.
Special thanks to Slice of Life for giving us space as writers!
I’ve never been much of a shopper. I’d rather be doing pretty much anything else.
I think new coworkers figure it out quickly – I can see their wheels turning as they look in my direction and wonder whether I’ve got day-of-the-week outfits hanging on a rotation schedule in my closet.
My lackluster shopping habits garner thankful praise from my sweet husband about his “low-maintenance, frugal wife” and her simple ways.
Until it concerns his food. And we were out of yogurt.
When he arrived for Christmas, Dad brought a bag of fruitcake cookies and a Georgia fruitcake for all of us to enjoy here on the Johnson Funny Farm in rural mid-Georgia. My soul was warmed into holiday spirit when I imagined Aunt Sook of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory announcing: “Oh my…it’s fruitcake weather!” as her breath smoked the windowpane in the frigid kitchen. I wondered if, true to the story, she had ever really sent one of Haha’s whiskey-laden fruitcakes to President Roosevelt, whose Little White House in Warm Springs Dad and I had just visited two days before Christmas. I sliced away merrily, setting out the sticky colorful cherry and orange candied-fruit and nut pieces on a plate.
Trouble is, most folks don’t like fruitcake. You have to have deep, multi-generational Southern roots and some serious value upbringing to ever acquire a taste for it. That’s why I was so proud that my Oklahoma-born/Georgia-raised husband took a quick liking to fruitcake and savored some of the brick. Even still, we had a lot left over. His affinity for it came in handy in the absence of more suitable breakfast groceries.
With gratitude to Felix, today’s Pantoum celebrates our nut-blended Georgia roots!
Common Threads 