Our host today for VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Erica Johnson, who offers inspiration here in a new-to-me form of poetry called a cascade. These remind me of Pantoum poems. Erika explains: It’s a form created by Udit Bhatia and asks that the poet take each line from the first stanza of a poem and makes each one the final line in the stanzas that follow. This results in the poem resembling a tumbling waterfall, which was when I knew I needed to go look through my photos of waterfalls for inspiration!
Erika shares the process with us: Read over the cascade form and write out the pattern you wish to follow: tercet or quatrain. I found that having the structure written as a reminder helped guide my writing.
My mind went straight to Gibbs Gardens, where I’d rather spend the day in flowers than at work. Here, you can check out the bloom report and see where I’d take you if you were spending the day with me. We’d have lunch at The Burger Bus and order daffodils to plant next season.
Let’s Play
I did not want to get up today I’d like to sip coffee with friends in a cafe talk books, catch up, paint daffodils, play
I’d drive to Ball Ground stroll Gibbs Gardens’ spring blooms I did not want to get up today
the tulips have opened, Monet’s pond awaits I’d load up the girls for a quick getaway I’d like to sip coffee with friends in a cafe
we’d laugh and share stories take off work for the day get a slow start, talk books, paint daffodils, play
Our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for VerseLove is Ann Burg of New York, who inspires us to write haibun poetry. Haibun is a form that includes a prose passage to set the stage for a haiku, which immediately follows the prose. You can read her full prompt here. I reflected on a scene from Saturday morning as we ate breakfast.
The Head and The Feet
Saturday morning breakfast at the Country Kitchen on Pine Mountain we were waiting on our eggs and grits when I saw him shuffle past our table. A young and impatient mother with a crying child pitching a fit was stuck behind the elderly gentleman in in the aisle, clearly frustrated at his slow speed, in his ill-fitting sweatpants with black socks and orthopedic sandals. He veered right n the direction of the restroom and she squeezed left to her table, kid still screaming. My husband’s back was to the action as I gave the play-by-play. Notice him, I urged, when he comes back by. I thought it ironic that his orthopedic sandals looked like hiking sandals. Life can be cruel like that sometimes, but eggs arrive to scramble hard truths. I was taking a bite when my husband asked, Is that a veteran’s hat? We should buy his breakfast. And the next minute, this husband of mine – just like his mother would have done – excuses himself to walk by the man’s table to get a better look. And then I saw them talking. Why did tears fill my eyes? Why, here at this table, over eggs and bacon, coffee and grits and buttered biscuits with muscadine preserves, was I crying as I watched my husband place his hand on the shoulder of the old man and his wife as he thanked him for his service. I escaped to the gift shop to collect myself, wipe away the tears, before my husband returned with the scoop – as his mother would have done: it’s a veteran’s hat. He’s 78, was a sergeant in the Army, and he has four kids who are all currently serving in the military. His wife told me he has cancer, and when he finished chemo and his gray hair came back dark. And he always smiles. So we finished our last bites and I felt the tears welling again, excused myself to the restroom, and was almost fine until the old man walked by and place his hand on my husband’s shoulder in gesture of figuring out who’d treated them to breakfast. And I realized what we’d always said of ourselves when we walk into a place: I look down for snakes, he looks up for bees ~ and though we see things differently, we don’t miss what’s important.
Rita DiCarne of Pennsylvania is our host today for the 12th day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us to write list poems, prose-style or with line, about all the things we love. It makes me think of Tom T. Hall’s song, “I Love.” You can read Rita’s full prompt here.
Our host today is former high school English teacher, Kate Sjostrom , a teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Writer in Residence at the Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park.
You can read Kate’s full prompt here as she inspires us to write about emotions in concrete and abstract terms.
A Wood Thrush sings while perched on a branch in a green forest.
Susan Ahlbrand of Indiana is our host today for Day 10 of Verselove at http://www.ethicalela, com, and she inspires us to write love letters to a place we love. She challenged us to try a villanelle, a 19-line poem of five tercets and a quatrain with a rhyme scheme and refrain sequence. As I sit on the campsite of a Georgia State Park recharging my batteries this week, I could not think of a more fitting place to pay tribute.
Villanelle Tribute to Georgia State Parks
out in the woods on a state park campsite
nestled in shade by meandering creek
Pollock-splashed beams of breeze-filtered sunlight
Wendy Everard of New York is our host today for the sixth day of VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com, encouraging us to write forgiveness poems. You can visit the website for her original prompt, which I’m sharing in part here as she quotes Joseph Bruchac from his book A Year of Moons: “It’s January here in our Adirondack foothills. The time of Alamikos, the Abenaki term for the first moon of the new year. In English, it’s the New Year’s Greeting Moon. It’s the time when people would go from one wigwam to another – nowadays one house to another – and speak the New Year’s greeting, Anhaldam mawi kassipalilawalan. Its meaning, translated into English, is, ‘Forgive me for any wrong I may have done you,’ a recognition of the fact that there is always more than one way to look at any situation, any human interaction, because it would be said not just to people you know you’ve wronged, but to everyone. Everyone.”
She goes on to describe the process we can take writing our poems:
“Your poem can take any form you wish. Bruchac urges us to ‘think of the times when your own feelings were injured by a word or deed from someone who was totally oblivious to the fact that they’d wounded you. It happens more often than we think. We’re in a hurry and we brush someone off. We make a remark offhandedly or say something that we may think is humorous but in fact cuts another person to the quick.’ Or think of a time that this happened to you. Or just write a general poem of forgiveness – giving it, asking for it, or struggling with it. Reflect, and write a poem that captures the spirit of “anhaldam mawi kassipalilawalan.”
I’m not gonna lie. I’ve forgiven some doozies, and I’ve been forgiven for some doozies, others of which I may never be forgiven for, but I’m struggling with one that needs a lot of head space and heart space. I’m still chiseling away at it, ten months later. And poetry helps me see that I’m not alone in my struggle.
To bard or not to bard? That is today’s question from Jennifer Jowett of Michigan, our host for Day 5 of VerseLove at ethicalELA.com. Please join us to read poems, or write one of you own to share.
Jennifer encourages us to UNfind lines, making them opposite and see what they bring us in poetry. She says: “We’ve played with found lines. Sorted through them. Rearranged them. Created new poems from them. But have we ever un-found them? Find a line of poetry that speaks to you. Un-find it by exchanging the main words with their antonyms. You may choose to keep smaller words like helping verbs, prepositions, and articles or use an opposite for those too. Write one line or several and join them together. Or use a line as a starting point for a longer piece.”
I’ve been reading Steam Laundry by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, a living poet in Alaska, and I’m using lines from her collection today. Here are the original lines from the book:
Not the way I came (At Last an Invitation from Eldorado)
I thought of the egg (In the House of our New Marriage)
So we each took turns in the water (Tom and Elmer Dive for the Gun)
Some towns glitter (The New Camp)
When I lose myself (At Last an Invitation from Eldorado)
But here the sun spins around (Lost Luxury)
Here is my Antonymic Revelation Poem for today, and I’m grateful to Jennifer Jowett for inspiring us to write today.
Thank you to all of the organizers and technology friends at Slice of Life who give us this space to blog all during March and weekly throughout the year. So much would be missing without our writing community, and it takes dedication and commitment to continue the work. You are appreciated! A huge thanks to each slicer for teaching me new things all month and sharing in the writing journey. What a gift we have in our fellow writers.
If you ever go to The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, you’ll see a circle in the floor that was cut from the old original Grand Ole Opry when it was at the Ryman Theater down near Broadway and brought to the new Opry when it was built. It looks a lot like a vinyl record album. You can read about its history here. The theme song for years at the Opry, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, is made manifest in that circle where all the greats have stood, reaching into the hearts of their audiences and singing from deep within their souls. All songs, after all, are poems set to music.
You can see the circle in the floor on the stage of The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Click the link at the bottom of this post for the live video with the song!
My friend and fellow writer Barb Edler at Sitting Behind the Eight Ball planted a seed for how to conclude a month of celebrating living poets the day she wrote a spine poem using the titles of the books in my poetry stack from a picture I shared. Then, the seed idea sprouted in a Cento poem from Lauren Camp’s poetry on March 29. It was as if a poet was urging me to think of the center, the truth, the room and to let the vision be as large as creation.
And so today, to conclude The Slice of Life Challenge 2026, let’s gather around the great circular slice and stand together as we invite all of the Living Poets back for a line in the multi-voiced Cento poem that features each poet throughout the month. I have taken one line of each daily poem and combined them into a collective song – to call the spirits of our poetry ancestors, the poets of today, and the future generations of poets to keep writing. What would a world be without poetry, without song, without voice? I envision each poet stepping up to the microphone to say their line, then returning to their place in the circle.
May the Circle Be Unbroken
When the earth makes a particularly hard turn
I can’t sleep at night
Glazed eyes, I go into a poem
perched on the edge of euphoric plummet
Eyes up, Arms out
Lulled by the rhythm of pewter waves
whatever your name is, you are with your own kind
Listen closely and maybe you’ll realize – it isn’t your voice
allow that it’s supposed to be in bloom right now
beneath each human move
beneath this wing
A poem is a gesture toward home
Inside the case were all the photos
we rouse ghosts
wanting in
what’s left is footage: the hours before
My life is filled with the souls of women
There are parts of you that fade with time
women in rustling skirts, old men with walkers
people on the street
They say to stay strong
I am a fortress
Maybe the poem is a cry for help
A star shoots across the sky
A tricky riddle cleverly solved
for the nonbelievers
Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams
Never forget that
let that vision be as large as creation
That that parade of it all might ignite me
Side note: Denise Krebs also wrote a Cento using a line of each of her Stafford Challenge poems from this month so hop over to Dare to Care to read hers as well. She, Barb Edler, and Glenda Funk are the others in a small group that meets once a month to write together. These ladies are not only writing friends, but also real friends I’ve met in person and who may know me better than those who sit feet from me at work every day. Truth.
Here is the poem as it looked when I used Cento sticks to arrange it, and the order of the sticks from the underside that tell the order of each poet who wrote each line in the photo beneath this one.
Here are the poems and poets from which each line was taken throughout the month, in this order that appears above (but not in date order 1-31):
The Song of the House in the House by Joy Hard
I Worry by Wendy Cope
How Nature Calls Me by Glenis Redmond
Midnight, Talking About our Exes by Ada Limon
Undivided Attention by Kate Baer
Back to School by Amy Nemecek
Goldenrod by Maggie Smith
Whose Hate did You Swallow by Victoria Hutchins
Brazen by Marcela Sunak
Showing Up by Naomi Shihab Nye
The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From by Joy Sullivan
Duplex by Jericho Brown
Salvage by Miranda Cowley Heller
Who We Gonna Call by Amanda Gorman
Noche, La Casa Mag de Lena, Lamy, New Mexico by Sandra Cisneros
Providence by Natasha Trethewey
Marriage of Friends by Hannah Rosenberg
Blue by Sophie Diener
Eclogue with Paris and Prayer by Chelsea Rathburn
The Order of the Day by Billy Collins
Stay Strong by David Gate
Virginity by David Elliott
Queries of Unrest by Clint Smith
Before by Brian Rohr
An Address I’ll Forget by Sarah Kay
The Dark Doorway by Lyndsay Rush
First Snow by Arthur Sze
What Not to Say to Your Students at the Juvenile Detention Center by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell
Fear Of by Lauren Camp
Taxi by Misha Collins
Finally, here is a video of the theme song sung during the 100th anniversary celebration. Click the link below the pictureand sing along as we bid farewell to the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge and invite it to journey on in our daily lives….and to return in 2027 with more voices in this great circular Slice of Life.
For April, please consider coming to join us for VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com. The party starts tomorrow, and we will be writing a poem daily through the month. If committing to an entire month seems too much right now, perhaps you can come on weekends or a couple of days a week. We’d love to have you join us! As Denise Krebs shared today: I’ll be writing poems each day in April at Ethical ELA’s #Verselove. Maybe you’ll join Kim Johnson, Glenda Funk, Sharon Roy, Margaret Simon, Rita DiCarne, Erica Johnson, Barb Edler, me, and many others. No need to sign up. Just join us here: https://www.ethicalela.com/verselove/
The first time I ever heard Sarah Kay perform “Hands,” I was speechless. She was young, polished, and profoundly moving in her delivery. She’s the living poet I’m celebrating today during the Slice of Life Challenge. Each poet’s collection has inspired me to take a selection of their existing lines and rearrange them, creating a Cento poem from their work.
Sarah quickly became a favorite, and one whose YouTube videos I share with my book club when I send out morning poems during National Poetry Month. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was coming to Serenbe Pavilion in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia this May! Serenbe is an hour from where I live – a Saturday night drive well worth the cost of a reserved seat. I can’t wait to hear her in person – I’m thinking of it as a small pre-retirement gift to myself to ignite the flame of all the poetry events I’ll finally be able to attend, even if they’re on weeknights. For today, I’m thumbing through A Little Daylight Left and indulging in the joy of her writing.
You can read more about Sarah Kay here; this link has her famous Ted Talk “If I Should Have a Daughter” embedded into the article with the interview.
My Cento:
I study the metronome of his breath
I am a snow globe of worry
So maybe this is a Magic Cat
A tricky riddle cleverly solved
We laugh & laugh & laugh
These lines were taken from the following poems, in this order:
An additional thought today:
When I woke up and read a post this morning from Peter at Five Hundred a Day, I realized that I, too, have been fishing for the place my words are looking for (don’t miss his blog post today – it’ll bring a tear or two or a Kleenex full). In 2025, a colleague and I started an office book club. Recently, she has become a Silent Book Club host, and we have both seen our husbands, infrequent readers prior to this additional club, show up and take ownership in “their” book club. It has been a blessing, and as our ladies’ book club meets for our discussions and adventures, our husbands will go have dinner and discussions of their own. I made a mental note: there is something to showing up without expectation to discuss a book that appeals to folks..
I share all of this to say that like Peter, I’ve been fishing for an in-person writing group in my town and nearby smaller towns, and I found the Silent Book Club equivalent in a group called Shut Up & Write (SUAW). Each writing group where I can share with others is so unique, but one type of group I don’t have in my life and desperately need is in-person. I applied and have apparently made the cut, was approved as an organizer, and will complete my onboarding training during Spring Break in a week and a half. I’m casting my reel out to ask if anyone has attended a Shut Up & Write event and to ask for your experiences. I’d love to get your thoughts.
Ollie eats good poetry; hence two of these books appear more loved on.
I was transfixed on the smiling poet delivering her poem with grace and poise at the Biden inauguration. Wearing a yellow coat, with red, she beamed and took the podium. When she spoke, I was speechless, mesmerized. Her name is Amanda Gorman, and her poetry is healing. Our nation needs a spoonful – perhaps a bottle full – of Amanda Gorman right now. You can read more about Amanda Gorman here and here. I’ve composed a Cento poem using Gorman’s lines from various poems, listed beneath the poem. Her words: Pay Attention. Learn from them. are words I will carry into the day.
We Rouse Ghosts
Even as we stand stone-still
we rouse ghosts ~
A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.
This truth, like the white-blown sky.
What endures isn’t always what escapes.
Pay attention.
Learn from them.
Taken from: The Shallows; Who We Gonna Call; The Miracle of Morning; & So; Cordage, or Atonement; Hephaestus; In the Deep
Common Threads 