Poetry Friday round-up is with Kat Apel down under with snails and cats and #petpicpoems
I have a new creative obsession outlet: zentangle poems. I signed up for art card exchange with Amy Souza at Spark . I have a pocket Buddha reader. The pages are small (2″ x 3″) and full of wonderful Zen words in which to create small poems. Here are the art cards I sent out.
The winds, coming and going free See beyond reality, illusion, vision, dream beyond the realm of words. (Zentangle Buddha Poem #1)
Disentangling truth can free you. Understand sweetness. Trust the self. Nothing exists forever. (Zentangle Buddha Poem #2)
Find truth in a tangle– hopelessly question Understand the tangle-truth. (Zentangle Buddha Poem #3)
How brightly you will shine! You are yourself. You, wherever you are. (Zentangle Buddha Poem #4)
You will know the scent of sandalwood against the weed.
My sister is an artist. (You can find her on Instagram at bethsaxena_art.) Beth sent me this folded book with the message “This book wants to be a poem.” I’ve had it for a while. She painted in blank spaces just the right size for Zentangle Buddha Poems.
The womb is pure and free. Wonder indeed entered is calm insight and truth.
This summer it has rained every day here in South Louisiana. The effects of climate change are here, warmer air, warmer oceans, more water vapor=more rain. We are waterlogged. However, the plants seem to love it. The trees are greener than ever, covered in resurrection fern that only turns green when it is wet. I’ve managed a daily walk between downpours. I took this picture yesterday of the bark on one of our oak trees.
Live Oak, photo by Margaret Simon
There’s imagery here, metaphor maybe? Find your own way into a small poem and leave it in the comments. Be sure to respond to other writers with encouraging words.
This old tree frosted white with lichen brightens a trail to fairy heaven
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Covid numbers are rising in our community. It’s invaded my family. We thought we were doing everything right. We are all vaccinated. Apparently, the Delta variant doesn’t care. The good news is no one is very sick. The vaccine is doing its job. Needless to say it’s rocked my world. We thought we knew. Now we know nothing. Keep masking up, my friends. This awful ride isn’t over yet.
Trying to replace some sense of control, I planted a tree. I’ve been nurturing a red buckeye for years. My friend Jim gave me a seedling. I’ve kept it in a pot, then a bigger pot and a bigger one, but now it’s in the ground. I hope the roots are ready.
In January, my friend Marion died from an aggressive cancer. I did not get to say goodbye. Before her death, she and her daughter Robin cleaned out her yarn supply. They gifted me with two large boxes that I placed in a closet upstairs. I wasn’t ready to open them. Robin had asked that we plant a tree to memorialize Marion. When I planted the red buckeye, I thought of Marion and the yarn, so I opened one of the boxes. I found a piece of knitting and wrapped it and placed it in the hole before placing the tree. A simple gesture that I am writing about here, so I can remember.
red buckeye
Marion was a writer. We met in a writing group once a month for at least 18 years. The poem “Last Words” by Rita Dove appeared in The New Yorker shortly after her death. This poem was just what Marion would have said.
Let the end come as the best parts of living have come unsought and undeserved inconvenient
In the Open Write at Ethical ELA, Tracie McCormick prompted us to write a Golden Shovel. Here’s my Golden Shovel for Marion.
Bury the Knitting (Golden Shovel for Marion using the striking line from Rita Dove, “Let the end come as the best parts of living.”
I bury the knitting; Let dirt fall like rain on the stitches of your gentle hands. The end came too soon. I come to this tree today to pray as you did. The roots will ravel around the best parts of a daily life of love and care-filled living.
Poetry Friday round-up is with my friend and writing group partner, Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
One of the best things about summer is having time to be creative. I’ve enjoyed designing collages on marbleized notebooks as well as writing poems for the Summer Poem Swap, coordinated by Tabatha Yeatts. The third exchange I sent off a notebook to Tabatha herself. And she gifted me with a poetic zine, Today’s Poem (after me, after Cheryl Dumesnil’s Today’s Sermon.)
I love this personal-to-me poem, especially the line about toy phones. I’ve been answering a lot of toy phones lately with my little grands, and I love how this one line captures the Joy of being with them in just a few words. The magic of poetry! Thanks, Tabatha, for organizing this fun and meaningful exchange and for being my partner for this round.
Today’s Poem, zine by Tabatha Yeatts
Today’s poem riffles through a pile of to-do lists, looking for blank paper
Today’s poem answers calls from toy phones
Today’s poem hears sunflowers’ reminders to feed the birds
Today’s poem clicks like a typewriter while it’s napping
Today’s poem refracts a rainbow into your bathwater
Today’s poem runs back and forth through an imaginary sprinkler
Today’s poem fills your tank and walks you to your car
Tabatha Yeatts, (for Margaret Simon, Summer Poem Swap 2021)
Does anyone feel like summer is quickly going by? I did not, intentionally, make a list of goals for this summer; however, there is that running list in my head of things that are not getting done. So be it, right? Summer is for relaxing and taking each day as it comes.
When I look out of my window, I see this mandevilla vine going wild. It’s stretched beyond the reaches of the trellis. So be it… Let it go. That is what this plant teaches me. (This post is up later because I forgot it was Wednesday, another good sign of summer.)
Wandering Mandevilla vine, Photo by Margaret Simon
This being the first Friday of the month, our Sunday night writing group is up to a new challenge, this time from Heidi. Tabatha Yeatts recently posted a poem by Gail Martin. “What Pain Doesn’t Know about Me” makes a great mentor text for writing about nearly anything. Molly used the prompt to cleverly write about frogs!
Heidi added to the challenge to throw in anthimeria. Go ahead and click the link. I didn’t know what it was either, but I’ve likely used the technique before. Anthimeria is converting a noun into a verb, or a verb into a noun and so forth. I had already drafted a poem when I saw this added bonus, so I edited for the effect.
What Grief Doesn’t Know About Me
after Gail Martin
How I go to bed early and rise before the sun.
My duck-feet. How my surface-body is still while I paddle fiercely.
I can count syllables while walking. I lullaby babies.
He’s not taken my singing,
My generations in the South,
My ability to swim in the deep. Tread water indefinitely.
We don’t talk every day. We have coffee together on Mondays.
Now, as I watch my cat bat at a black pen on the kitchen table, I know not to put my hand in the mix.
If you ask me how my day is going, I might cry.
Margaret Simon, draft
To read how others in our group met the challenge:
graphic by Carol Varsalona who is hosting the gathering of Spiritual Journey posts today.
This morning I turned the calendar to July and wondered where my summer is going. Carol invited us to write about Nurturing our Summer Souls for Spiritual Journey first Thursday. I thought I would wake up early and write, but the thing about summer is expectations fall into the sun. I woke up tired. The only thing I can figure is the water aerobics class last night has affected me in more ways than I thought possible. I have welcomed these classes, the time with friends, the cool of the water, and the invigorating feeling of exercise. But this old body is finding muscles that have been dormant. It’s a good thing, right? Remind me.
My summer soul is being nurtured by the National Writing Project’s #WriteAcrossAmerica virtual writing marathon. I’ve participated in three different stops. Each Tuesday a different project site takes on the marathon. This week I went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a place foreign to me. The story map is full of places to explore and writing prompts to contemplate. I stopped at the Indian Village Site and followed a link to Margaret Noodin’s Ted Talk.
I’ve been fascinated by Margaret Noodin’s work since listening to Poetry Unbound from On Being. Margaret not only shares my name, but she also sings. She sings her poems in Anishinaabemowin and English. Being Episcopalian, I love a good chant and that is what Margaret Noodin delivers.
As I listened I wrote. This poem follows her words and weaves in my own words as if we became a confluence of thoughts, two rivers meeting and flowing together for a time.
Minowakiing: The Good Land
Languages teach us of place. In this Good Land, we can keep ourselves alive, hearts beating wild, transforming the world in a net, networking, working in interconnection.
I see lessons in light see a word East move into melting transitioning time to place word to word.
Listen to sounds singing of fish bobbing in the water. Let’s listen to each other. Remember we are in a good place.
Remember the bird knows, the grass knows, the old oak knows
We inherit the language of our ancestors, reminded how to find the road, the map to our own lives. Here. Together.
Summer is hot, no matter where you live, and the best way to beat the heat is to play in the water. This photo is sure to cool you off. It’s from Lisa Davis’s Instagram feed. Lisa was the site director for the National Writing Project at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA. (pronounced Nak-a-dish) She is currently retired (I think) and enjoying being a grandmother. I couldn’t resist her post of her granddaughter dancing in the sprinkler.
Dancing Girl, photo by Lisa Davis
Is it possible to fall in love with a day? Joy catches me in its spray!
Margaret Simon, draft
Add your flash draft of a small poem in the comments. Return to give feedback to others who write. Thanks for stopping by!
Last week I took both of my grandsons to a local farm. See this post. They were cautiously curious. While we walked around, multiple young cats circled and rubbed up against us. Leo has a cat at home, but I think this was his first experience with this gentle, yet intrusive cat behavior. I found this photo in my phone and made it black and white. Don’t you love how you can do that with a slide of your finger?
Photo by Margaret Simon
I don’t want to touch you. Would you please go away? Your gentle mew invites me. Can we be friends?
Margaret Simon, draft
Write your own small poem in the comments and please come back to read and comment on other writers. Happy Summer!
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Text from Susan Edmunds
When I married Jeff almost 39 years ago, I did not know everything about him, but I did know that he had had a boa constrictor for a pet at one time during his wild childhood. Jeff has a brother who is only 18 months younger. The Simon boys spent a lot of time out in the woods along the bayou. Stories include the time they fished out a shark from the bayou. (Little did they know as young boys that sharks don’t live in the bayou; obviously someone’s throw back from fishing in the Gulf.) But that story is not the one I want to tell today.
Calm in every situation would aptly describe this hero. He sat next to me for hours and hours during natural childbirth…3 times…and never lost his cool calm demeanor.
Susan may not know this about him, but she does know that he cares about reptiles. Susan and Jeff go way back to days when she lead summer library programs, and Jeff would collaborate on ones on canoeing and camping and fishing all through the local Optimist Club. And she may remember (she sent me a photograph once) of a library workshop he brought our middle daughter Katherine to when she was four-years-old, and how Jeff showed particular interest in the snakes. Nevertheless, she texted on Sunday morning, and I sent my hero away to save the day.
Jeff and Susan patiently released 3 tangled rat snakes. photo by Mary Tutwiler.
I am deathly afraid of snakes. Jeff has tried many times to get me over my phobia, and often I’ve become the source of a snake joke. Needless to say I did not personally attend this snake rescue. In fact, I’m having trouble posting the pictures. I refuse to post the one of the three rescued snakes happily wriggling in the bottom of a trash can.
My calm hero was able to patiently cut away the mesh entrapment while Susan held the snakes’ heads. I don’t know which was braver, but combined these two people should win a prize. The snakes were not released in our backyard, thank you very much. They are happily in someone else’s yard.
Here is the text of a thank you email from Susan:
“Thanks again for coming to the rescue yesterday-I don’t think I could have done the extraction solo, the task needed experienced snake rangers comfortable with very close contact! Certainly you handled the snipping far better than I could have, didn’t see any fresh blood! Excellent work.”
Instagram photo by Susan’s husband, James. Those hero hands are mighty close to that snake tongue!
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 