Patchwork Prose and Verse
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be on a glacier with all this heat in the Southeastern United States today? We were there several years ago, and we took a helicopter ride to Mendenhall Glacier, where we got to ride with the sled dogs. Fun fact: they pee and poop on the run. Meeting the next generation of Iditarod and other sled racing dogs was a highlight of that trip!
Sled Team
Mendenhall Glacier
riding with the sled team dogs
Alaskan sporting!
In February, we traveled out west to visit one of our daughters in Nevada. We saw beautiful deserts with sunset skies in violet purples, tangerine oranges, buttery and vibrant yellows, and deep rose reds. Many of the cactus plants looked as if they were singing praise to their maker. I painted a watercolor picture, but it did not turn out at all, so here is a photo I did not take that shows better what I had tried to capture in color.
Holy Hands
Saguaro Cactus
praising purple sunset skies
raising holy hands
During the last week of June, I had the amazing privilege of traveling to Portland, Oregon to visit the archives of the poet William Stafford at Lewis and Clark College as part of The Stafford Challenge Poetry Conference. I learned that people often ask to see the actual hand-written notes and poems that he wrote on the day they were born, and so I did the same.
Archive Haiku
William Stafford:
I visited his archives …
my birthdate writing:
Here is my best transcription of this page from his handwritten notes on the yellow pages in the photos that follow, below.
8 July
We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.
Lost as leaves are, in the fall, each
has all its guarantee: sun, air wind.
I take the fall.
Maybe someone found all this language
the world brings. Not a snake but a stream
through the air, or maybe little waves
nothing holds — anyone in this town fear
news the ants work on? News peeled off
the yellow car that left here this morning; news
trotted among sounds, under the bridge. I felt
the snake across my feet in the bus. And watched
the conductor act calm, as required by the state.
The fox I stole gnawed : inside my coat. Men
act so free: “No fox I stole has ever bitten
me.”
Forsaken liberal, I stamped the curb:
every cause I ever found
has had my vote. Now the animals
prefer their keepers to the kept or freed.
8 July 1966
Seasons mark the brain: a shaft
of spring has always hurt what winter
held. I see beyond the plate and
feel the foxes well. No angel, no
prophet rides with me, but animals.
Keepers are enough too and they live well;
To feed that fox I commit to walk through hell.
every day
Lizards and liberals both low and
adaptable, come back to their holes and love it there.
Such great song scared the birds;
they tiptoe – winged away
Pascal fell through a million windows,
a little kid too smart to be saved by
stupidity.
Though the handwriting is challenging to decipher and does leave some questions, I hang on the first two lines:
We thought leaves waited, without
winds. But their work flourished, then.
Yes, these periods of waiting often seem frustrating, challenging, and even pointless at times. Some days we feel we are merely holding on. But we wait, knowing our work is flourishing. Knowing that the best is yet to come.
Rainbow Mist
she stood at the top of the falls
a treacherous plummet possible
oh, but look above!
a rainbow, God’s promise, kept her safe
I remember buying a new pair of white Keds as a young adult and someone saying, “they’re so blinding white, you might wanna kick some dirt on ’em.” That has stuck with me every time I see a pair of new white shoes, not yet traveled or broken in. And as a lover of well-worn shoes, this photo shared with me by my daughter-in-law sparked joy when I saw the love of living in one of my granddaughter’s shoes as she was fishing on the muddy brink of a pond.
Our shoes tell a story about the living we do!
Muddy Livin’
always have a pair
of well-worn travelin’ shoes
for muddy livin’
In 1971, we lived in Reynolds, Georgia on Robin Hood Road and the corner of Friar Tuck. Mom was pregnant with my baby brother, Ken, and Dad was pastor of the First Baptist Church. We lived here in the pastorium, and those were days filled with such fun of childhood – it’s where I learned to ride a bike without training wheels. I’m still looking for pictures of my favorite Keds sneakers – Red White, and Blue. Those were my favorite colors in those days, and I can see it in the campground pictures where we camped over the Fourth of July holiday. Mom always proved that she could outfish anyone, even times when she went fly fishing.
I’m still sifting through old photographs as I digitize them and share them with other family members. It’s fun walking down memory lane.
Camping Out
Red, White, and Blue stripes
camping at Fernandina
with my family
Happy 250th Birthday, America! It’s a great day for watermelon, and a great day to be born. My son, his wife, and their children await the birth of a son and baby brother. Whatever we do today, it’s day to celebrate.
Watermelon Seeds
soon there will be six
in this growing family
he is due today!
My mom’s mother worked in downtown Waycross, Georgia in the Sears and Roebuck Catalog Department. She took sales orders over the phone, and if my mother didn’t make the clothes I was wearing on her machine, it was practically guaranteed to have a Winnie the Pooh in the waist tag or on the left front chest. We got 20% off on everything – – at least, my grandmother did and so by default my mother did. When I think back on my childhood, this was my standard weekday garb. Shorts or knit slacks and a Winnie the Pooh shirt. The world had not yet thought of Velcro and light-up shoes, and honestly I think I am happy about that. At least I learned to tie my shoes early. Red Keds for the win! These were the days when dressing was so much easier – – this piece, that piece, shoes, and all the better if it actually matched. Oh, if we could just return to those days and clothes could fit as well as they used to. And if only the 100 Acre Wood were still a place as real as it once was.
L-R: Kitty (my grandmother’s good friend), me, Earl (my grandfather), Eunice (grandmother), and my mother, Miriam
What Remains
Hundred Acre Wood
remains only in the hearts
of children who knew
It’s been a year. Dad died on Friday the 13th of June, 2025 in the wee hours of the morning, after succumbing to complications from pulmonary fibrosis aggravated by both colon and prostate cancers. He was an avid reader and antiquarian book collector. He never met anything he didn’t want to collect, but he couldn’t live without books. My brother Ken and I hope heaven has a big library since he couldn’t take any of them with him. Dad’s brother Greg, also a collector but who has more of a book salesman approach to managing the accumulation, is helping sell the books and getting them to “all the right targets,” as Dad so famously desired. A book in the right hands is indeed able to change the world.
Heavenly Tanka
today marks one year
that we haven’t had you here
(are there books up there??)
more important: are there dogs?
most important: Mom is there…..
It’s kind of a rite of passage, that childhood pilgrimage to Orlando, Florida to see the castle and the mouse. Somewhere between 1974 when my parents took my brother and me and the late 1990s when I took my own children, the place got crowded – really, too crowded to enjoy. But there is this unspoken rule about taking the kids to Disney World, and so we packed them up and took them, checked the box and came home. The best memories from the 1970s trip were the A-Frame cabins we stayed in, Wilderness style, with one other family. The best memories from the 1990s trip were the night swims in the Wilderness Lodge pool. The memory of the mouse with my own children? Vague, except for the long line to get a picture.
Disney Downer Haiku
Okay, I confess:
Yeah, I’m a Disney downer.
Me?? Resounding meh.
Common Threads 