Tag: poem

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Open Write Day 3 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host for the last day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Barb and I have collaborated on several writing projects together over the past decade, most recently our book entitled Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment, published Taylor & Francis, a division of Routledge Press, released earlier this month. We write together the first Monday of each month in a small Zoom group and share what is happening in our lives. She’s the friend who shared with me the cards I’ve been using from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. You can read her full prompt here today, as she inspires us to choose any text or piece of art and write about it. She models an extended Fibonacci Sequence poem form using syllable counts 1,1,2,3,5,8 forward and reverse and I’m doing the same today with the same poem I used yesterday to inspire my writing ~ Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro. Hop on over to the prompt link later in the day to read the poems others have written!

What Marsh Nymphs Know

marsh

nymph’s

green glass

beads stolen

right out of the moon

attract the filthiest goblin

with more on his mind than those beads

but marsh nymphs know how

to handle

goblins ~

aim,

kick

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com’s Day 2 of the September Open Write is Allison Berryhill of Iowa. She teaches high school journalism and is a frequent host of amazing prompts in our writing group. Come read more about Allison and her full prompt here, as she inspires us to write a retelling poem.

I chose to rewrite my favorite childhood poem, Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro, as a Shakespearean Sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, where the rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, with ten syllables per line. Here is the original poem:

Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.

No.

Give them me. Give them me.

No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,

Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,

Better than voices of winds that sing,

Better than any man’s fair daughter,

Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.

No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon

For your green glass beads, I love them so.

Give them me. Give them.

No.

– Harold Monro (1879 – 1932)

***. ***. ***

Here is my Shakespearean Sonnet:

Nymphs Don’t Play

a goblin glumphed upon a marsh nymph fair

far through the pluff he’d glimpsed a glow of green

such beauty drew him to her, for to stare

pay homage to her globes he hoped to glean

nymph, nymph he glowered, sweetening his gaze

as moonlight cast a truth beam on intent

this young sylph, so accustomed to his ways

was not a stranger to his guileful glint

what are your beads that cast such radiant gleam?

they’re moonbeads, goblin, made of emerald glass

which thereupon his threat suddenly seemed

the type that beckoned kicking goblin ass

and so this marsh nymph, queen of her domain

unleashed unparalleled gonadic pain

-Kim Johnson

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Music

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s inspires us to write about what kind of music we love and what is beauty for us.

Righteous

I’m officially old, I suppose,

but they don’t make music

like they used to

those voices, that harmonizing

that message in

(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration

is what the world needs

today to fix what’s broken

inside the heart

The September Open Write begins tomorrow at http://www.ethicalela.com, and I’d like to invite you to drop in and read the prompt and write a poem with us. You don’t have to post it to experience the soothing balm of poetry. No one even has to know you wrote it. It doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t have to rhyme, it doesn’t even have to make sense to anyone else. It’s all about the habit of writing and having a daily routine of self-expression. The prompt will be posted at 5:00 a.m. Eastern Time, and there will be a process and an example. Come write with us! Kelsey Bigelow, Allison Berryhill, and Barb Edler will be our hosts for the next 3 days, inspiring us to get in touch with our inner voices.

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Broccoli

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks us to describe broccoli to someone who has never seen it before.

How To Save a Fairy

Imagine a miniature

forest with lush emerald trees

a canopy for fairies

sparkling magic beneath

but a foul odor

permeates the land

threatening the fairies

their twinkle-lights fading

in the putrid stench

then the wicked witch

steps from her lair

behind the twisted trees

holding her wrinkled green

fingers up grasping power in the air

her evil laughter beckoning

one brave fairy to come close for a deal

you love children? find them,

find those who will eat of the

foul-smelling trees that will

not harm them but will save you

and my noxious potion spell that will

kill you will only make them grow stronger

so the brave fairy

told the others

who told the birds

who told the woodland critters

who told the house pets

who prompted the parents

to cook all the miniature trees

we call broccoli

and feed them to the children

throughout the land

children in every house balked

but they ate the broccoli

to save their bedtime story heroines

from the evils of the wicked witch

and her foiled fairy fiasco

after dinner, all the mothers took

their pots of boiling broccoli water

to the edge of the woods and

slung the gut-churning water into the

forest, where the fairies watched

from afar and glowed brightly

as the screams of the witch

could be heard throughout

Fairy Land: “I’m melting! I’m melting!”

And that is why children, to this day,

will eat their broccoli – to save a fairy!

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September Favorite Teacher

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s is to tell about a favorite teacher.

Ta-Daaaa!

she was my daughter’s

violin teacher

Dorothy Mauney

she and her late husband

Miles were concert musicians

in the grandest venues

all over the world

but here she was

in a Hilton Head Plantation

living room teaching

The Suzuki Method

as her students

balanced ping pong balls

on the bridge

to learn form

as they played

I think what made her

my favorite was all those

times when they finished

a piece successfully

she played a triumphant

TA-Daaaaaaaa! in perfect chord

and her eyes dazzled with

passionate awakening

at the magic of music

as if she had surprised herself

with a masterpiece of her own

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Alone

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt inspires us to write about where we feel most alone.

I feel most alone

in a thick crowd

silly, I’m sure it seems, but

the trees and birds

hold greater friendship

than a sea of ten thousand

faces without names

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September Tricube

Last month, I started 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s form is a Tricube – 3 stanzas of 3 lines with 3 syllables each. Topic today: Not good nor bad – just writing. Card 41.

skies of blue
clouds of white
apples red

brand new shoes 
classroom light
comfy bed

Elmer's glue
craft delight
(tape instead)

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Three Friends

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt inspires us to take the line of a book by Louise Erdrich, The Round House, and use this sentence to start writing. Here’s the line: I had three friends. I still keep up with two of them.

I had three friends. I

still keep up with two of them.

The other has died.

This is a true poem. Back in the early 1990s, we moved to a new subdivision full of young families. Between the time I left a job teaching preschoolers and the time I went back to school and began subbing and teaching full time, I was a stay-at-home mom. Four of us would gather to play cards and use coupons we’d clipped from the Sunday newspaper inserts as our betting money. We all had old recipe boxes we used to file our coupons into categories. Diaper coupons were the hot ones – we all wanted those! We passed the time together while our older children were at school a couple of days each week.

Two people (that I know of) from that subdivision ultimately developed MLS, and I must wonder if it is environmental with soil brought in as they graded those homesite lots in coastal South Carolina. One was a young child who is now an adult and fully confined to a wheelchair, and one was my cardplaying friend who had two young boys. She’d married her much older sweetheart in high school and smoked most of her adult life. She went back to college and got a degree in nursing, then retired from Hospice care a few years before she began experiencing the symptoms of MLS. That’s when my friend, a Hospice nurse, called in her own team of Hospice caregivers in the Spring of 2025 and died in July-only a few weeks after my father died.

I still have the ladder back chairs she and her husband gave us one year. I painted and recushioned them to match the dining room table from my great grandmother. The kitchen spirits are alive with stories and memories. I laugh and cry when I pause and think of all the love and laughter there in six chairs at that table.

Oh, the fun we had!

I thought of her last night as my brother and I attended the inaugural fundraiser for Hospice of the Golden Isles, where my father gained his wings. Bourbon and Bites at Village Landing on St. Simon’s Island was a huge success, and I’m pretty sure there were more spirits present than just the liquid variety. Cheers to all Hospice caregivers and to our friends and family who have known their comfort and care.

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Unanticipated Blessing

This month, I continue 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt is to write about a doctor you know or one you went to – or their waiting room – or any memory in a medical office.

I always wanted children, and the dream at one point was to have a full quiver. I would have lived and breathed forever full time motherhood and had thought that would be my lot in life. When we found out the first one was on the way just a few months into marriage, arriving only one year and two months after our wedding day, much of the joy became worry about how we would make ends meet. But we welcomed our first child and found that we could make the necessary sacrifices for me to stay home after a trial run at working when she was 6 weeks old. When I tried to go back to work and leave her at a daycare, I cried all day there and all the way home. It was the only time in my life I’d ever been blinded by tears to the point I had to pull over and wait out the cry in order to drive. That evening, I gave notice and became a full time mother the next day.

the timing wasn’t

the best in the world to hear

the news: you’s pregnant!

I’ve never once regretted not working when my children were little, even though now I would be well into retirement if I had stayed the planned course. I knew that there would come a day they’d fledge the nest and take up with families of their own, but I didn’t want to miss those golden years of their childhood – so I took time on the front end of life and stayed home until all 3 were in school. And I cried in the primary school parking lot each time one started kindergarten.

Above all, in thinking of the prompt today, I can still remember the nurse in the now late Dr. Gregory Whitaker’s office in Savannah. She had short blond hair and was thin and friendly, and her Southern charm was reassuring and comforting as she read the result: yep, you’s pregnant!

I rejoice today for the individuality of my children – their uniquenesses, their strengths and interests, and what they have brought to the world. And I would say to any young mothers out there who aren’t sure how it will all work out: it will.

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A Pair of Loved Shoes

Last month, I started 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. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s asks to share about a pair of shoes we loved. Or a dress. Or anything worn or how we dressed all wrong. You get the idea.

Which Pair?

there’s been this pair and that pair, even

Great Granny’s bronzed pair, but nothing

compares to my birthday gift

Ugg pair from my sister-

in-law and brother

(a much loved pair)

for-sore-feet-

repair-

pair