Tag: Writing Down the Bones cards

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Rutabagas

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 prompts asks us to tell everything we know about rutabagas and turnips and other vegetables, fruits, and objects often ignored.

A lot of people ignore mermaids, thinking they aren’t real. Let me tell you something: they are. There are tree spirits that explain the whole situation.

Mermaids Tricube

real mermaids

come ashore

in moonglow

ushering

sea turtle

wee hatchlings

to water ~

darkness-cloaked

protection

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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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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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Paying Attention

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 in our Stafford Challenge small group. I’m continuing so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. One thing I appreciate as a writer is that during times when I’ve barely got my head above water with all the energy and demands from life and work, there are prompts to get me started – – which, of course, is the most important spark. Today, the prompt hits home in tender spots, asking us to write about what we feel when we see a homeless person holding a sign on the corner or to tell about a specific person that perhaps we didn’t pay attention to.

Here’s Your Sign

some topics hit deep

too deep to think into ~ I’ve

known a sign holder

and what got her there

I’ve witnessed her miracle

of overcoming

I know the power

of a mother’s fervent prayers

for a daughter lost

when I see homeless

sign holders I feel this pain:

that’s a mother’s child

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Vanishing

This month, I am continuing 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. Today’s prompt, card 33 of 60, asks us to write down, in 15 minutes, everything we can name that will not last and to keep the pen moving.

What Remains

faith

hope

and

love

will

remain

those

three

all

else

will

fade

especially

truth

in the age of AI

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Peace

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 prompt is about what brings peace and what is not peaceful in your day. As a fan of visual poetry, I chose the form of the breathing wave today the way it may appear on a screen in a medical office (scroll fast and you can see the wave appear in the line breaks.

Where Peace Lives

I’m up at 5 a.m. writing

most days, even today – a

weekend I’ve longed for

after months of long

trips home to clean out

Dad’s house. Peace awaits

~ coffee, silence, cool gray screen

backlit keyboard, eye masks ~ where

the meditations of mind and memory

converge without to-do lists

and deadlines and data

keeping the pulse in

check, breathing

slowly, deeply

where I belong

before the clock

kicks in, governing

routine like a thief of

time, getting in the way

of the relaxed pace of

living without all the

demands awaiting

outside these

doors in the

real world

I find my

peace

here

…..

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Suffering

Last month, I started writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, and I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts.Today’s post asks us to consider all the ways people suffer.

I’m not in a mindset to write as much about suffering since I’ve seen my father’s suffering through illness and death so recently – and it has left some raw wounds not yet healed – but I am in a mindset of certainty that once the suffering is over, there is great reward and comfort in the arms of a loving Heavenly Father. I can imagine the desserts at the buffet are pretty tasty, too, and calorie-free, but I have appealed to the Lord to please ban Dad from the dessert table until we get his house and storage rooms cleaned out. I have a secret hope that there is a big screen TV in Heaven and he’s having to sit in a time-out chair and watch us clean it all out while all the other angels up there are swooning over the cakes and pies. We asked Dad so many times to please let us help him clean up and get some affairs sorted out, but we were always met with his insistence that he had it under control. And his attitude.

His definition of ‘under control’ and ours were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Nothing was under control. Most things in his house, health, mind, and world were, in fact, spinning out of control. This, too, I’m convinced, was all a part of his suffering in not being able to admit he could no longer function – – and having too much pride to accept the help he so desperately needed.

I’m convinced: we are all suffering. If we were to all sit in a circle and generate ideas about the order of the worst kinds of suffering, we might could gnaw all the meat off the bone with our stories.

And then, there is Romans 8:18: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. And herein lies a Haiku to remind us of this truth:

all the suffering

cannot compare to the joy

of Heaven’s blessings

Amen.