This week it’s snowing in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but last week the weather was mild. Cool enough to set a fire outside in the fire pit, yet warm enough to run and play without a jacket on. Our family vacation the week after Christmas was as good as it gets. I wrote about it here for Slice of Life.
Today’s photo was one I took in the late afternoon as the sun was setting over the hills beyond our mountain house. This photo captures the peaceful magic of time to do nothing much. As the weather has turned to winter storms and cold temperatures this week, I hope this photo brings a peaceful moment of warmth. Write with me. Leave your small poem in the comments and come back to respond to other writers. Happy new year of writing.
Pleasant perch on Blue Ridge Mountains
Muse in the magic of a smoking fire freeing your soul to rest on God’s roof.
Today I am nursing an upper respiratory virus. I am boosted and tested negative for both Covid and flu, but this cough is nagging, and the low grade fever has me curled up with hot tea watching Christmas movies. It should be much better by Christmas, let’s hope. Next week I’ll be traveling with my family, so I will take the week off from blogging. I’ll be back with a new photo on Jan. 5, 2022. Thank you for supporting this weekly photo prompt by writing, reading, and commenting. You have made my one little word “Inspire” glow with purpose and meaning.
This week I have taken a photo from Molly Hogan’s Facebook post. She is forever curious and explores with her camera. When I asked her about this photo, she told me her husband thought she was nuts leaning over a bucket of ice. In Maine, temperatures have turned to winter, and she captured the beauty and mystery of winter in this photo.
Photo by Molly Hogan
Frozen in fundamental shape this world inside rises this speck becomes seen this fundamental shape is frozen.
When taking photographs, you don’t always get the one you planned. We recently took my grandchildren to a local art museum. There were dancers in the gallery advertising an upcoming performance of The Nutcracker. I wanted my grandson Leo to take a picture with them. Well, he’s 3 and he was afraid of the dancers, so he kept his distance. I took this photo anyway. Now I look at it as a potential poem prompt.
The Nutcracker is as traditional in the United States as Christmas caroling. We all know the story. We can conjure the iconic music in our heads. It’s been years since I attended a performance of the ballet, but I have fond memories of going as a child. Play a bit of the music while musing on this photo, and place a small poem in the comments.
On my daily walk, I pass a Japanese Magnolia tree. I’ve photographed this tree often, and written poems about it here and here. On a foggy grey morning, the dew drops glistened as I passed. I was compelled once again to photograph this tree.
Secrets of the night revealed on dew drops come morning
Margaret Simon, draft
Leave your #smallpoems #poemsofpresence in the comments. You may post on our Facebook page as well. Please leave encouraging comments for your fellow writers.
I volunteered to host a holiday party way back in the summer when the living was easy. My Thanksgiving week was busy with family events, but we managed to squeeze in Christmas decorating as well. My youngest daughter Martha was visiting, and she has a good eye for design. She created a piece with candles and cedar branches and berries. When I lit the candles, I was surprised at the atmosphere of warmth and welcome they created. On a tricube roll, I wrote a gratitude poem for these candles.
Christmas candles by Margaret Simon
Holiday open doors candles lit
flickering welcoming visitors
fireplace glows everyone knows we’re home
Margaret Simon, draft
Welcome to this photo. Write a small poem, any form, in the comments and encourage other writers with your words. Happy Holidays!
A Happy Thanksgiving thank you for this little community of writers. Thanks for making time for yourself on Wednesday morning to write along with me and others. I am grateful for you!
This past weekend my daughters and I traveled to Texas wine country. You can read my Slice of Life about it here. Our Airbnb was connected to downtown Fredericksburg by a narrow concrete bridge across Barons Creek. On the chain link fence were locks. Maggie said, “Like Paris!” Oblivious to the reference I took this picture.
Locks over Barons Creek, Fredericksburg, TX by Margaret Simon
I challenge you to write a small poem without using the word locks. If you haven’t tried a tricube form, read Linda Mitchell’s prompt from Ethical ELA. Like haiku, a tricube captures a single moment with few words. Three by three, three syllables in each line, three lines in each stanza, three stanzas. Share your small poems in the comments or on Facebook. Join here.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Fredericksburg, Texas
For my 60th birthday back in August, my daughters bought me a vacation with them to Fredericksburg, Texas. A sisters trip. We invited my sister-in-law who lives in Dallas to come along. This was to our advantage because she drove and picked us up at the Austin airport to drive to Fredericksburg. Not to mention she was fun to have along.
Fredericksburg is a town in the hill country, settled by Germans, and home to 59 wineries. Just imagine all girls at a winery table on the banks of Baron’s Creek toasting and sharing stories. Nothing better, right? We laughed, we cried, we laughed.
One evening we found ourselves closing down a winery. We had stayed beyond our welcome, and it was dark. Two of my daughters worked on getting us an Uber (We were being responsible), but on a Sunday evening in a small town, they were few and far between. We were also being a bit picky and didn’t want the old cowboy with the car full of trash (and a foul smell). We walked to the entrance and someone told us the gates were closed. We’d have to walk to the back gate which was apparently quite a distance down a dark dirt road.
To the rescue appeared Enrique. He told us to wait right there while he got his truck. His truck was like brand new and big enough to hold 4 of us in the back seat comfortably. When he got us to the back gate, Katherine said, “The Uber is 15 minutes away.”
Our angel Enrique said, “Ya’ll going back to town? I’ll take you.” And he flashed his million-dollar-twenty-something-Mexican smile our way.
We made it safely back to town while I embarrassed my girls by calling our angel “Enriquo.” But I was sober enough to find $40 to leave on the seat. He saved us and wanted no payment for it.
My Inkling friend Linda Mitchell is the host at Ethical ELA today with a prompt for writing a Tricube poem. Here is mine in deep gratitude for my daughters.
Opossum in a persimmon tree–say it three times fast. I caught this guy one morning on my walk with Charlie through the neighborhood. Does he look guilty to you? He didn’t move at all while I wandered to different perspectives to take his portrait. He was suspicious, yes, but completely still. Charlie didn’t bark. I don’t think he saw the opossum. We, opossum and I, however, locked eyes, and I will never be the same. These creatures usually freak me out, but this one…this one…was different somehow. Maybe it was the persimmon tree backdrop or his innocent guilty stare. Tempted to name him, I’ll just post his portrait here for you to muse about.
Opossum in persimmon tree, by Margaret Simon
Leave a small poem in the comments. I’ll be back to post mine. Be kind in your responses to other writers. Enjoy!
Opossum in a persimmon tree Staring right back at me Did I catch a thief or make a new friend?
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Through blogging communities like this one (Slice of Life) and Poetry Friday, I’ve met many mentors for writing. Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is one of those special teacher-poets who generously gives of herself. During the pandemic shut down, she recorded videos in Betsy, her writing camper, every day. These can be found on her YouTube channel. Last year she went back to teaching, so she didn’t blog as much. Boy, did we miss her voice in cyberspace!
But she’s back and each week on Friday, she posts a mentor poem on The Poem Farm with student-friendly (and adult-friendly) instructions for writing your own poem. This past Friday, her poem came up on my Instagram and was just right for our writing time.
Crocheted wool hat by Margaret Simon
One of our kindergarten teachers is having a baby, so I crocheted a little hat for her new child. This was on my mind when I wrote alongside my students. I gifted the poem to Miss Heidi along with the hat.
When sheep’s wool becomes yarn becomes crochet becomes hat, a newborn baby’s head holds a sheep, yarn, hands, needle, warmth, and I wonder how prayers offered for a stranger growing inside a friend becomes a child wearing a hat passed on from sheep to hand to heart to warmth to love.
Margaret Simon
Jaden, 6th grade, has started a new trend when he writes his gratitude poem. If he makes a mistake, he turns it into a picture. I noticed his little designs and complimented him. He said, “Oh, I made those dots and stars because I messed up.” That sounds like a poem to me. And so he turned his mistakes into stars into a poem.
Recycle Poem
Old mistakes become rainbows and new designs old mistakes become new inspirations when I look at the designs will I remember the old mistakes? will I think of new ideas? shapes like stars and squares? or something new? what will the new mistakes become?
Jaden, 6th grade
One of the fourth grade teachers is raising monarchs. Katie was inspired by this and wrote her circle poem about the life cycle of a butterfly.
Life Cycle Poem
Out of a small egg comes a small, slimy, bean. A bean that squirms and grows and grows. Grows into a small chrysalis where it stays for a while until it’s ready to fly. Fly into the real world with beautiful, colored, wings and to reproduce another small egg.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
On Saturday as part of the Festival of Words, I had the privilege to attend a small workshop with Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She led us through a number of writing exercises and ended with a discussion of the haibun.
From Poets.org: “Haibun combines a prose poem with a haiku. The haiku usually ends the poem as a sort of whispery and insightful postscript to the prose of the beginning of the poem. Another way of looking at the form is thinking of haibun as highly focused testimony or recollection of a journey composed of a prose poem and ending with a meaningful murmur of sorts: a haiku.”
Aimee added to this definition with two concepts: Aware, a Japanese concept similar to natsukashisa, a type of nostalgia with a fondness for what is gone but also slight optimism for what’s ahead and a sense of calm because this is the natural course of things. She also Nezhukumatathiled the form with the addition of scent. She spoke about scent as a way to activate the reader’s mind to a memory.
On Monday, I went to a former school to screen a student for gifted. They put me in my old room to do the testing and while the child took her test, I wrote this poem.
I enter the spacious classroom, and you are not here. So many hard days in masks and social distance defined our relationship then. Your desk is gone. The smell of pencil shavings is sharp mixed with musty-mold of an old school. Today I am testing a girl like you, bright and edgy with a little swagger to her walk. But she isn’t you. No one can be you but you. This chair, the small blue square that lost its cushion years ago, holds me again. I trip over its wobbly wheels wishing you were here to laugh at me. Where are you now? In another classroom, another school, same masked face, same suspicious eyes. I want to know if you are OK. I only ever wanted you to be OK.
Students come in Twist my heart into a knot And leave it longing
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 