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Slice of Life Challenge Day 10/ Poetry Friday: Golden Shovel

Posted in Poetry Friday, Progressive poem, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , on March 10, 2023| 26 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

Quote of the Day

A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.

St. Basil, source 365 Days of Wonder

I literally yelled at the poor East Indian dude who answered my called to the credit card company. They shut down my credit card over 3 weeks ago due to fraud, and I still do not have a new card. I was livid. I bantered on about subscriptions being canceled so I couldn’t even watch TV. A bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

He patiently checked on the status and calmly explained that I should wait a few more days. I’ve heard it all before. Then I asked, “Why could the Disney Plus charge go through and I don’t even have the secret number yet?”

He again very patiently explained that some companies allow them to change over the recurring charges. “You mean I don’t have to get on the phone and call all these companies?”

My voice was calmer. I was breathing a little better. I apologized for yelling at him and promised I would try to wait a few more days.

Then I went outside to water plants and ended up pulling weeds. I’ve always wanted to be a gardener. One who enjoyed digging and planting. I am hopeful it may be happening. I was amazed at how easily I calmed down when I dug in the cool brown dirt, watched doddle bugs emerge, and felt that satisfaction that I was doing something productive.

Then I called Mary. Mary is my good friend who is a master gardener. I told her about my butterfly garden. She said, “Come over! I have some plants for you.”

I went shopping for plants in Mary’s yard and came home with pots of native sunflowers, a blooming ground cover, and one other butterfly plant whose name I’ve already forgotten.

The digging, clearing a space for something new, finding new plants, a gift of friendship all soothed by worried soul. And I hadn’t even gotten to a glass of wine yet.

Poetry Friday is with Heidi at my juicy little universe.

In my notebook this week I used the above quote to create a golden shovel.

“he who plants kindness gathers love.”

When he sees the first hummingbird at the hibiscus, he
gathers sugarwater for who–
ever may visit; he plants
bee balm, hosta, zinnia, and kindness
attracting a single ruby-red who gathers
us to the window to love.

Margaret Simon, draft
Mary’s orchid
My orchid rebirth

Mary and I share photos of our orchids that are re-flowering.

There are still dates available for the Kidlit Progressive Poem in April. Don’t forget to sign up here.

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Slice of Life Challenge Day 9: A Sweet Encounter

Posted in Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged , on March 9, 2023| 10 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

On Tuesday mornings, I have cafeteria duty. I hate cafeteria duty. You have to be a cop, making sure the kids follow the procedures and keep the talking to a minimum. “It’s time to eat, not talk. If you continue to talk, you will be asked to leave.” The kind of talk that’s not kind. I do try to greet the kids with a smile and good morning, but breakfast time has one goal. “Eat something.”

When P came in, he didn’t follow procedure. He came straight to me before going through the cafeteria line.

“Good morning,” I said. “I see you have a broken arm. What happened?”

P begins his monologue. A story he has practiced and told before. “I was on my skateboard, and I was trying to go up the two steps, but I hit the first step and fell.”

I express my sympathy, “That must’ve really hurt.”

“Yes, but… that’s not why I’m talking to you. I need help with my tray.”

I jump into action. “Of course, I’ll get your tray for you.” I went through the line, brought him his tray, opened his milk, and packaged, heated breakfast sandwich.

His smile and puppy dog eyes were thanks enough.

Later, I was walking down the hall to transfer to my next school. P’s kindergarten class was dutifully lined up to go to P.E. or library. He stepped out of the line when he saw me and whispered something I couldn’t understand.

I leaned over, put my arm around his good shoulder and leaned in. He whispered, “I love you.”

My heart melted. I actually had tears in my eyes as I wandered out to my car. I’m going to change my perspective on cafeteria duty.

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Slice of Life, This Photo Wants to be a Poem, Writing, tagged , , , , on March 8, 2023| 18 Comments »

The neighborhood I live in used to be known as Paradise Woods. My husband tells me when he was a teenager, it was a popular spot for “parking”. When I walk, I cross over an empty lot to get to another street. Whose land is this? I often wonder. What was here before?

I’ve heard tales that this space was once a dairy farm. Cattle farming was common for early French settlers in southern Acadiana, where we live in Louisiana. Either the LaSalle family or the Daigles owned this property, likely using it as farm land. It’s all legend now. I love thinking about the history of this little walkway as it leads me under a beautiful cedar tree. Who walked this field 100 years ago? We’re all visitors for a short time. If the concrete could talk…

Where the sidewalk ends, photo by Margaret Simon

In the early morn
before the sun rises
before my work day begins,
before the houses wake,
I walk across this path
more sure-footed on solid concrete–
A path that leads to an old cedar tree,
planted by a farmer making shade
for his cattle. I speak to his ghost
and thank him for his hard work,
his dedication to the land,
and his kindness to those
who’ll pass here again

Margaret Simon, flash draft

Every week I invite you to write with me about an image. This post is also a Slice of Life post for this month’s daily challenge at Two Writing Teachers. If you stop by, leave a small poem in the comments and return the favor of reading other poem offerings and writing encouraging words. This is a safe place to write. No judgement allowed. Consider following my blog to get this weekly prompt in your inbox.

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

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Slice of Life Challenge Day 7: My Teaching Philosophy

Posted in Creativity, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Writing on March 7, 2023| 6 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

Remember Alice? The sleep-deprived child from my Slice on Saturday? She wanted me to let all my readers know that she took my advice and read The Lightning Thief, our current class novel, before falling asleep rather than watching TV. If you’ve ever read The Lightning Thief, you may not think this is such a good book to read before going to sleep. Talk about wild crazy dreams filled with Minotaurs and such. But the book helped Alice fall asleep at a reasonable hour, so she was enthusiastically ready for class today. 

She also wanted me to share her Basquiat art piece. 

I asked my students for an idea for today’s Slice of Life, and they pointed to a painting I created years ago in a creativity class for my gifted certification. That class was one of my favorites. I loved my teacher and the projects we did. I went searching for the binder. More than any other class, this one taught me how to embrace my own creativity so that I could encourage it in my gifted students. This was a reminder I needed today.

I found the binder, my final project, in a cubby and hugged it close. I’m so glad I kept it. Looking through the binder was like looking into a time capsule. So many things I had forgotten. But my painting with my teaching philosophy remains on the wall of my classroom today. I still believe in it and try to live it everyday. 

In the painting, I analogized creativity with opening a door. In my classroom, I want to make the students feel safe as in a birdhouse that gives them the freedom to explore ideas, discover relationships, and ask questions. A cat symbolizes curiosity; the tree, exploring possibilities; and the planet, discovery. The purple mountains symbolize expanding the horizon, and the wildflowers, flexibility.

Margaret Simon, circa 1999

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Slice of Life Challenge Day 6: Gifts of Grace on the Bayou

Posted in Gratitude, Photography, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , on March 6, 2023| 8 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
A quick video of an egret in flight on Bayou Teche, Louisiana.

What do you do with a perfect day? The temperature was just right, 70 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. Humidity low. Sunday is our day to catch up and get ready for the work week. We go to church and come home to our individual chores: cat litter, trash cans, lesson plans, laundry, grocery…and I had writing group. “You think we can squeeze in some paddle time?”

I decided that there were a few things I could put off like vacuuming, so I said a resounding, “Yes!” Perfect days are rare, so I feel we must embrace while we can. So we made a date for 4:00 PM. Jeff hosed out the canoe (ants), I grabbed the paddles, and off we went.

Heading directly into the sunset, the colors change. The old leaves on the oaks are a dark green while the new pollen fuzzies are a golden yellow. People complain about this popping of the pollen. It aggravates allergies and covers cars in a fine sprinkle of golden dust. All part of the healthy life cycle of a great live oak tree.

Pollen on the Grandmother Oak

Some, not all, of the cypress trees are showing new growth. These tiny needles are the brightest neons of green. The truest sign of spring.

cypress needles against blue sky

As we paddled home, Jeff noticed a plastic chair wedged in some tree roots across the bayou. He said, “I think that’s our lost chair.” A few storms ago, the water had risen and taken with it a plastic chair from our yard. Sure enough it was ours. Jeff managed to back the canoe next to it and grab it with his paddle. The chair was a little muddy but still in tact. I had to take a selfie to get a photo of it, so the angle and perspective are odd, but you get the idea.

Jeff rescued our long lost backyard chair.

We were home before the sun set and were treated to the appearance of a great white egret. Grace from God to praise this perfect day. Click on the video above to see this majestic bird in flight.

Great white egret

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Slice of Life Challenge/ Poetry Friday

Posted in being mamére, Creativity, Poetry Friday, Progressive poem, Writing, tagged , , on March 3, 2023| 11 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

I love to go for a walk in the morning. Getting out of the house is my problem. First, I have coffee. Then I check email and these days, write a Slice and read some Slices. Comment. I get sucked in. Even with this problem of getting out of the door, once I’m out, I’m never sorry. Most days when I get back home, there’s a mad rush to get ready for school. Somewhere in this morning routine, I try to get in some writing. Sometimes the writing happens while I am walking. Notes app, microphone on.

My grandson Leo visited this past weekend. He is highly creative. He draws with amazing design, unlike most scribblings of a 4-year old. Last week we ran into my cousin Andrew, the architect, during Mardi Gras. I showed Andrew Leo’s drawings. My daughter started a shared album about a year ago, so I have them on my phone.

Andrew told me a story about his second grade teacher. He loved to build things, and his mother, my aunt, would throw out things like paper towel tubes, boxes, and magazines, etc.. But not Andrew’s teacher. She had a box of trash just for him. An Andrew box full of scraps to build with. He has never forgotten this and may be the artist he is today because of it.

Being Mamere I collected toilet paper tubes, gumballs, and a box. Early on Saturday morning (Leo woke up at 5:30 AM), I showed him the stuff. “You can make whatever you want.” I gave him a plastic container with glue and a paintbrush and left him alone. He created something. When his mother saw it, she noticed that he had even found a wad of cat hair to add to the top of one of the towers. I placed the sculpture in my new butterfly garden to hopefully attract insects and caterpillars.

Leo’s sculpture
Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tanita at {fiction, instead of lies} for Roundup.

For Poetry Friday, it is the first Friday, so the Inklings (my writing group) have a new challenge. And it came from me. I asked my friends to toy with the use of anaphora (repetition) in a poem using the mentor text from Jericho Brown, Crossing. I wrote one last week that I ended up putting in the trash, so I didn’t have anything to share. Remember the walk I took? I spoke a poem into my Notes app that is my poem offering today.

To see other Inklings poems:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Mary Lee Hahn @Another Year of Reading

Click here to sign up for the National Poetry Month Progressive Poem

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Spiritual Journey & Slice of Life: Meaningful Words

Posted in Slice of Life, Spiritual Growth, Writing on March 2, 2023| 13 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

Some time ago a blogging friend suggested subscribing to The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. At the time I didn’t know who she was, how amazing, how she has written a book, married Jon Batiste, and that she battles leukemia every day. All I knew was her writing felt like a letter from a friend. Her prompts compelling.

Prompt 230 came from The Renunciations by Donika Kelly. I wrote from the line “Let this be a moment of remembering”

photo by Henry Cancienne

“Let this be a moment of remembering” Donika Kelly

Let us be bird and nest. Let
me curl my toes around this
threshold to flight. You’ll be
waiting with your net of comfort, a
reason or two why this moment
shouldn’t crush me. Eyes of
love, we’ve been here before–remembering.

Margaret Simon, Golden Shovel for Jeff, my nest for 40+ years

This post is also the first Thursday of the month Spiritual Thursday gathering. Today Karen Eastlund is hosting. She suggested we write about “words to fall back on.”

Over and over I fall back on Mary Oliver’s words. The line “You do not have to be good” from Wild Geese gives me the confidence I need to plow through. There will be days that I mess up, say the wrong thing, write something shitty. But we don’t have to “walk on (our) knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” We can embrace our soft animal body and let it love what it loves.

This Lent I have started writing in my journal using a line from the Bible as a jumping off place. This morning the verse I turned the page to was “You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created.” Ezekiel 28.15.

My response:

Guilt lives in my backpack.
I carry it with me wherever I go.
I’ve never done enough according to Guilt.
I’ve been selfish and without purpose.
Guilt is heavy and wants to break me.
Some will say, “You’ve done everything you could.”
I wish I believed them.
Where weeds grow, more will come
until you decide
their simple beauty
is within their blamelessness.

Free stock photo from Pixabay

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Slice of Life: Courir de Mardi Gras

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged , , , on February 28, 2023| 8 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

I have lived in South Louisiana for 40 years, but had never attended the authentic Courir de Mardi Gras. Courir is a French Cajun word meaning run. In the western parishes north of us, there are multiple small towns that have a chicken run. The basic idea is the krewes are going house to house to get all the ingredients for a gumbo. The final ingredient is a chicken. The chicken run is a crazy, wild drunken race to catch the chicken.

I introduced this cultural tradition to my students, and we did chicken art on the Thursday before our Mardi Gras break. We followed a video created by the Acadiana Center for the Arts linked here. The chickens were created using recycled materials. In Courir de Mardi Gras, the costumes are made with scraps of fabric and masks are made with screen. It is the total opposite of New Orleans Mardi Gras which is all about royalty and elaborate beautiful costumes. Courir de Mardi Gras has a captain rather than a king who leads the krewe.

My husband and I became interested in Courir from a performance we saw at the  Acadiana Center for the Arts. We decided to go to the parade in Eunice when all the krewes come in, some on horse back. My daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids joined us. We had made some costumes by adding fabric patches and fringe to old clothes. I used an old scarf, some sparkling jewel tape, and an old denim shirt. As the parade came through, Leo was poked (in jest) by a couple tricksters; one of them untied my shoelaces. Afterward there was a band we love to hear and dance to, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.

I have to admit I was a bit creeped out by the chickens. I refrained from petting one. They walk close to the crowd to allow for petting. The chickens are surprisingly calm. I gasped when I saw a dead one on the ground. And to top it all off, a woman was wearing a taxidermic chicken on her head. While the band was playing, some of the tricksters got on the stage and threw a live chicken into the crowd. Luckily, I was not close by.

Learning more about the culture of my own state is fascinating and fun. I’m also trying to accept some of the craziness of it all. For the most part, it is harmless fun.

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Poetry Friday: Shattered (An Ekphrasis)

Posted in Photography, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , , , on February 24, 2023| 17 Comments »

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tabatha at
The Opposite of Indifference.

I have been off this week and joyfully participating in two writing challenges. I truly wish I could do this every day. Writing to prompts makes my creative juices flow. If I write a poem each day, I feel a certain satisfaction that I’ve accomplished something.

This week the Poetry Sisters challenge was to write an ekphrastic poem, which is a poem written to art. Their theme this year is transformation. In the February Project with Laura Shovan, Molly Hogan used photographs of abandoned buildings to prompt us to think about their story. I went to a mysterious place with this image.

Photo by Molly Hogan

I’ve always enjoyed writing about a mystery. In high school, I had a short story published in the school’s literary journal about a portrait in an abandoned house that ended with a question, a mystery. Many in the Facebook group wanted to know more. Mystery is like that. We want to know. I recently heard on a podcast “surrender to the mystery.” I believe that we don’t know all the answers, and we are not supposed to. So let this poem sit with you in all its unknown.

Shattered

She left the curtains
hanging,
the window open,
the cat in the yard.
She left when the air
was warm and damp
fearing her shame
would shatter her dream. 

Margaret Simon, draft

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Poetry Friday: Purpose

Posted in Poetry Friday, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged , , on February 10, 2023| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Carol at Beyond Literacy Link

I feel like I chose the wrong One Little Word this year. I’ve grappled with it since I decided. What is the purpose of a One Little Word? Is it a guide or an affirmation? Should you pursue it or let it comfort you?

Every day I choose a quote-of-the-day to post on a Jamboard for my students to write a response to. Lately, I’ve allowed the students themselves to take over this routine. I have a few quote books that they use. We select a photo background and use the text box or sticky note feature to write in. One of the quotes this week was this one. Avalyn chose a background to this Mark Twain quote that was both day and night. It made me think about my OLW: Purpose.

I decided to play around with an acrostic form using Purpose. And this poem emerged:

Pray
Until you
Realize
Purpose is
One
Step at a time
Every day.

Voila! Poetry led me to the answer I had been searching for all along. Life is a journey. There is no destination. It’s a constant discovery day by day. I cannot choose a word like Purpose and magically feel satisfied with myself. It is a word that I will search for the rest of my life. Unlike Mark Twain’s idea that there is a day when you will discover why you were born, I’ve come to the realization that why you were born is a daily march. It’s what we do. And every once in a while, someone or something will knock you off the path and that’s when you need a different word: Grace.

These days I need Grace more than Purpose. I need to let myself feel what I feel, but not get attached to those feelings. Not let the feelings define me. I received this message from EnneaThought of the Day:

Remember that your cognitive error is to identify with your changing feelings and emotional states, especially negative ones. Since your feelings constantly change, your identity does as well, undermining many of your psychological needs. Notice this tendency in your thinking today.

EnneaThought of the Day,

I’m going to keep Purpose around for a little while longer. It’s only February, but I’m hoping to relax a little and let time do the telling. Maybe another more appropriate, more calming word will emerge.

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