Tag: poetry

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What are you Waiting For?

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 the question, “What are you Waiting For?”

Today I offer you a tricube. It’s three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables.

Let’s Just Be Real

I’m waiting

to retire

next chapters

exciting

relaxing

traveling

reading books

in sweatpants

until noon

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Don’t Ever Forget

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 begin the writing with “Don’t ever forget,” and to return to that phrase if we get stuck.

An Old Desk

don’t ever forget

the importance of a pen

and old writing desk

the kind with a felt

writing surface and hidden

compartments above

to tell the secrets

of those who wrote before you

sitting in this space

from their own corner

of the world they knew, not much

different from yours

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Body of Water

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 tell about a body of water with which you are familiar. What comes to mind is the creek that ran through the back yard of our honeymoon house years ago.

Honeymoon Creek

its babbling trickle

from the top of the mountain ~

we watched for black bears

from our wraparound

porch with fireplace and rockers

sipping fresh coffee

~ always, it seems, I

wish we were living right there

in all the wonder

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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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Open Write Day 1 of 3 September 2025 with Kelsey Bigelow

Today’s host of the first day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Kelsey Bigelow, who works as a mental health poet and renowned author of books, slam poetry events, and writing workshops in Iowa. You can read all about Kelsey and visit today’s prompt and poems here, as she inspires us to think about what lives on the “good side of memories.” Today’s writing is rooted in stream of consciousness writing that can live on in that form or be the start of one that takes root for another.

It’s All in the Kneading and Knowing

the happiest thing

I’ve ever tasted was that moment

when in my grief

soul-gutting tears in a

big-enough-for-all

walls of a VRBO

reverberating sniffles

and crumpled Kleenex

and happy laughs of

oblivious grandchildren playing

with their newest cousin

trying to teach him

to walk at six months

and believing he could

the strains of Amazing Grace

sung to a guitar

by the rest of us trying

to sing with the best of us

believing we could

as we all sat piled high

on the curved couch

pajama-clad, remembering

*******. ********

then one broke the silence

asking for a happier moment

in the autumn – another together

time when smiles returned

then another added

yeah, when

any of us can

make a word from tiles in

turntable Scrabble

and another added

yeah, and only if Mom

brings the pumpkin bread

and right then

in those delicate moments

I knew three things:

that I had taken the reins

as the newest family elder and

that tradition of togetherness

lives on in food tried first

as a flopped recipe

when they’re toddlers, then tested

again and again to perfection

by the time they’re teenagers

and can’t think of gatherings

without it and

that families too

are like that ~

learning to walk

learning to sing

learning to bake

learning to live on

believing

through all the tears and laughter

that together

we can

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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