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. The prompt today captures the essence of what it feels like when you are all set to write, new journal and pens, time on your hands, the perfect chair, and nothing comes to mind that you feel like writing about. Today, Goldberg asks us to just write who we are, what we are feeling.
Fran Haley and I are this week’s hosts of the November Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. Each month, this writing group gathers to write for five days. We rotate as hosts and participants, and we provide encouraging feedback to other writers. Come read and write some poetry with us! You can find the direct link here. You’ll meet fellow writers who become the kinds of friends who know you better than those you see in person.
Instructions on Being a Dragonfly – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem
Our Host
Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver). You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com.
Inspiration
As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month. Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations of topic, form, or title. In Instructions on Not Giving Up, Limon illustrates the glory of spring through an unfurling leaf as a tree takes on new greening after a harsh winter.
Process
Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Instructions poem.
Kim’s Poem
I’m reflecting on a moment I spent beside a lake watching dragonflies dart around chasing each other as my inspiration for today’s poem, borrowing a couple of starter lines from our U.S. Poet Laureate to drive my thinking about form. The greening of Limon’s tree leaves and new growth reminded me of the color changing moltings that dragonflies undergo throughout their lives as they continuously evolve.
Common Threads 