Common Threads

 

 

Your Life’s Table of Contents Poem

I once asked a friend named Jill how she got to be such an organized principal.  “I think it was because my mother gave me all her old empty spice jars when I was little,” she replied. “I spent hours and hours organizing those jars in different ways, and so that got me thinking about organization at an early age.”  

A couple of years ago, Dr, Sarah Donovan shared a thought of organizing a presentation proposal on verse in verse. That thought has not stopped spinning in my mind, and I started thinking about how I might write a table of contents organizing my poetry for the poems I have written over these past few years in verse. 

Process

Imagine you are creating a collection of your own work, and try your hand at an organizing poem today using a format like the one below to be a table of contents or any other feature of a book. In this version, for example, Chapter One would be “The Smiles, The Fears, The Laughter, The Tears.”  It would contain poems coded for those themes. 

Kim’s Poem

Your Story

your story
the who
your life
the you

the smiles
the fears
the laughter
the tears

the reading
the school
the lessons
the rules

the truths
the dares
the risks
the prayers

the seasons
the phases
the heartaches
the praises

the family
the friends
the losses
the wins

the adventures
the chases
the journeys
the places

the people
the villains
the heroes
the champions

the daybreaks
the sunsets
the victories
the regrets

the plans
the dreams
the truths
the seems

the joys
the sorrows
the yesterdays
the tomorrows

the hurdles
the grit
the drive
the quit

the tables
the meals
the loving
the feels

the mysteries
the talks
the rides
the walks

the hobbies
the fashions
the pets
the passions

the hopes
the wonders
the worries
the blunders

the questions
the choices
the answers
the voices

the moments
the chances
the music
the dances

the living
the times
the memories
the signs

your story
the who
your life
the you

 

Morning Steam Fog On the Pond 

On my morning drive 

when the steam fog 

rising off the pond 

in the still air 

hangs out to play tag 

with the rising sun,

I’m mesmerized.

Strata of layered mists, 

like stacked flat 

bunk bed sheets, linger. 

Steam-swirls of my 

fresh-ground coffee 

rise up, fleeting, 

against the windshield 

to glimpse other 

vapors vanishing 

into thin air. 

The long pond grasses glistening with dew, 

shallows rippling 

with flitting fishes,

bring cottontails 

and wading birds 

to nibble at the edges 

of a world 

teeming with life.

I sit at the stop sign

admiring the view 

until someone pulls up 

behind me

urging me along. 

More than I will ever see 

this picture of tranquility, 

I feel it deep in my soul.

 

Snippets of Phone Conversations on March 13

6:56 a.m. – Dad

Dad:  “…just got back from our morning walk through the village, and playing off-leash in the dog park….this dog has me in training…..did you know Kona even has her own piggy bank for all the change we find?…..” ( I smile and my heart melts) 

10:50 a.m. – daughter 

Daughter: “Mom, you should see this Shark Ion Robot. Andrew’s parents got it for us and we named it R2D2…..It has the aura of a pet….we talk to it like it’s our dog…..does it seem strange, having petlike feelings for a vacuum?” (I chuckle, feel blessed at the miracle of my grown child)

12:55 p.m. – neighbor

Me: “Yes, we can hear the planes….No, we are not the ones flying them…..I’m so sorry the noise is disturbing you…….I’m not sure if they have to have a permit for an air show, no…..”(I shake my head and roll my eyes)

1:10 p.m. – husband 

Me: “He just called me, too….yes….I told him we don’t even own a plane……,So how is the very same one who shoots an entire bucket of tannerite at random times and practices target shooting every Sunday afternoon complaining about the air show noise???…..” (I throw my hands up, like a student trying to make sense of a logical fallacy…)

   

 I was inspired by Fran Haley yesterday to write a mirror section of her poem Listen. I started and ended with three of her words (in italics) and used her repeating word throughout. Thank you, Fran!  

…Just to listen

thud of dogs diving, bed to floor 

collar tags tingling, jingling 

to greet the wee hour 

awakening alarmless

listen

ticking toenails on wood floor,

traipsing to the water bowl 

lapping, drinking beard-dripping droplets 

returning to scratch the sheet by my cheek….take us outside!

listen 

clicking of leashes (because…the coyotes)

crunch of frozen ground underfoot, trickling rush of fresh mountain springs 

(not really – it’s Schnoodle pee pelting leaves of grass, but I can dream!)

listen

birds chirping start-of-day songs 

delightful ditties

joy for the soul: Live! Breathe! Sing! 

listen

heat clicking on, hot breath of house whispering warmth, clocking out soon as sun streams in for the day shift

listen

clatter of silverware clinking 

kitchen kisses 

love of my life swirling sugary creamer

to keep all bitterness at bay

silence, golden

dogs bedded back down

snuggled next to me on the sofa

snoozing, snoring securely after snacks 

as I sit and write, thinking

how comforting it is

…..just to listen

   

The Pledge 

A fellow towel shopper reached toward the back of a shelf. She was a large woman, naked from her t-shirt to her sandals. 

I did what others might do in this situation – silently gasped, forced a poker face, and pretended to scrutinize the craftsmanship of the towel loops while recovering from shock. I did the sneak-a-look, look away, sneak-a-look thing people do when they don’t mean to stare but feel compelled to assess the carnage of a train wreck. No one wants to be a fake alarmist. 

Nearby shoppers were sneaking looks, too. I was contemplating whether I should alert security when I noticed a slight hem just above her ankles, revealing that we were dealing not with full-fledged nudity but with seamless khaki leggings. Semi-relief trickled over me. 

Here’s a strong life lesson, I realized.

My mother’s voice kicked in: Form-fitting khaki garments are not your friends.

Holding up my three Girl Scout pledge fingers on my right hand, I silently vowed On my honor, I will try….to do everything in my power never to appear naked in public. That day, I purged all solid khaki clothing items from my wardrobe. 

New towels would have to wait. 

 

 

             

Pushing My Buttons

Awhile back, Staples came out with the Easy Button. This was a red button with a silver base about 3 inches in diameter, and when you pushed it, a convincing voice proclaimed, “That was easy!” 

Periodically, my students would earn a push of the easy button if they lined up quickly and quietly or managed some other classroom protocol effortlessly. Back in those days, their faces lit up like I’d hit the golden buzzer, even minus the confetti.  

I’m not a classroom teacher anymore, but I’m still in education – and I feel the daily frustrations! We need a revival of the proclamation button, only we need a variety of buttons instead of just one. We need them lined up on our desks, to proclaim things like:

“I need coffee!”

“This isn’t easy!” 

“Bring me a computer sledgehammer!”

“I can’t take one more Zoom!”

“No! Just….NO!”

“Do families even wear clothes anymore?”

Or maybe I should invent a wild card button app. I could type in what I want it to say and push the button. 

Nope, never mind…..

…...that would make some things too easy. 

 Clever clover! 

Living cover for

Unvertical lovers. 

 

             

Tia

You know it’s going to be a good day when you get a visit from the shared alpha farm dog. You picked up Tia from a cardboard box containing a litter of free puppies when your daughter saw them there by the stop sign at the post office peering over the flap and looking like German Shepherd puppies. She managed to convince you that you were indeed getting a free, full-blooded German Shepherd. And a female – worth even more! Maybe in the world of pedigrees she would be, but you knew you’d have her spayed on her first eligible day. 

So on the way home, you look into the sweet face of a puppy now destined to be a farm dog simply by your choice to swoop her up. She’ll chase off critters and follow the tractor through the field and sleep in the shade of a turkey fig and plop down on the front porch with her strong-jowled head in your lap, wanting you to scratch behind her ears as you rock in your red Cracker Barrel rocking chair, drinking a Mason jar of sweet iced tea. She’ll take up residence with you, then move back and forth between farm houses, convincing each family that she has not eaten in weeks and that she needs a hearty meal, despite her thick trunk and spoiled smirky smile that tell the truth. 

This clearly non-German Shepherd lady’s role here on the land is more important than being your average German Shepherd- it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s about knowing 200 acres like the back of your paw, surviving snakebites, fleas, and ticks, navigating foxes, raccoons and coyotes, learning not to chase the chickens and deer – and protecting your people. 

Any old dog can be a Shepherd, but it takes the best to be a mixed breed farm dog. 

 

             

Just Dropping In

Pike County, Georgia is 50 minutes south of the world’s busiest airport, on the backside of nowhere, on the flight path to everywhere. It’s all rural farm land, mostly undeveloped and fenced off with barbed wire, with a population of 17,000 people and at least  three times as many cows. We are what is known as a bedroom community – not in a red light district sense – but because folks who live here mainly come home to sleep. They get up and drive an hour to work in a larger city by day to return home and enjoy the peaceful tranquility of evenings and weekends in the country, where houses are so spread out that every man can pee right off his front porch. 

That’s why I was stunned to see a parachuter circling down straight out of heaven with a bright yellow and purple chute as I drove down a remote highway making the 30 minute drive to the grocery store to pick up our Kroger ClickList order. No one just up and jumps out of a plane around here at supper time and lands in a pasture, so it kind of had me worried about whether the guy fell out prematurely or jumped on purpose thinking he was somewhere else.  I broke the law to snap a picture while driving in case things ended badly, then turned the car around to see if the fellow needed a ride back to civilization. As I turned around, an oncoming pickup truck driver with a pinch of dip in his bottom lip and a mixed breed farm dog riding shotgun gave me the backwoods wave and the tip of his John Deere cap that means, “I got this….go ahead…. I’ll help this feller figure things out,”  so I turned back around and continued on my way. But I still can’t help wondering what the story was, though. My hunger for answers was deeper than our need for food this week. 

 

             

Why We Rescue

One’s a fight-pickin’ dog, that’s who he is – he likes to pick fights, but he can’t win any of the fights he picks. I don’t know why he picks fights. Nobody knows. Boo Radley’s a fine Schnoodle, though, he’s a real good boy. He can’t help that somebody abandoned him and left him for dead and then we came along and brought him home and promised him a better forever. Bites off more trouble than he can chew and then he gets his little @$$ kicked, that’s how it happens every time. It’s just what he does. He tries to be a street fighter, but he can’t. He ain’t no street fighter like his brother. 

Now his brother carries a little knife strapped to the inside of his leg. A Schnauzer shiv. He wears a spiked  black leather jacket and sports his flag and drives this loud little motorcycle. Fitz came from a gang of bad dogs runnin’ the streetz and livin’ off garbage scraps, but we saved him. We rescued him from certain incarceration and brought him and his broken leg home, but he won’t give up his ways. He’d been on the run and we think thrown from a car but we can’t prove it. Had to have eleven teeth yanked out when his breath started smelling like a rotting goat carcass, but now he sleeps with us and we let him kiss us in the face.  He’s a real piece of work, and he don’t take nothin’ off nobody. 

Don’t go handing us any sweet little innocent puppies to love. Give us the dogs with histories and issues. The ones with stories to tell and the spunk  to tell them.