An equation poem:
1 sweater lying on the bed + 1 dachshund + 1 bad choice = I’m sorry
Visual representation:
1 sweater lying on the bed
1 dachshund
1 bad choice
I’m sorry
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March. And to Dennis, even though he balled up my freshly de-wrinkled sweater. Rascal.
a sweet, savory, crunchy slice of haiku:
This is a real thing.
That is all for today, folks.
I know. You’re welcome.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
Dear Goat In The Pasture At The End Of The Street Where I Make a Right Turn On My Way to Work Each Morning:
I just want to say thank you for lifting my spirits on weekday mornings as I drive by your pasture. You cannot know that I look for you and your herdmates, or how the sight of you fills me with inexplicable peace. Perhaps it’s the idyllic setting, the pastoral scene with its inherent restfulness. Maybe it’s the continuity. Your pasture remains as it always has, while all around us fields are being bulldozed and sculpted for the coming of houses. The trees farther down this road are being timbered this very moment… I wonder: Had birds already nested in them? Were there any little eggs that are now lost? It’s possible; this is March. Isn’t tampering with birds’s nests and eggs a crime? I digress. I cannot help it, watching the trees come down even though I know the new houses to be erected will be homes where people will build their lives and live their stories, where children will grow up… meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a man is busily destroying people’s homes, sending them fleeing from danger like animals trying to outrun a raging forest fire, in search of a different place to survive…
Yesterday as I came through here I heard a bird calling and wondered if its tree is gone. Will the big, beautiful,snowy-feathered hawks soon be gone, too? I haven’t seen one for weeks now. I keep watching. And in all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen skunks until last week when I saw two dead in the road and my son saw a third. We didn’t smell them, thankfully. Makes me wonder about them never seeing the end coming…
I don’t know why I should be telling you all of this, dear Brown Goat in your green pasture so often dappled with new morning light when I drive by. All I really meant to say is thank you. I see you grazing in the grass and a tiny bit of balance returns to the universe. Your placid nature spills into mine. You somehow impart the right and needed mood for the day…
I am grateful for you.
Sincerely,
An Admirer
P.S. I would deliver this letter to you in person but I suspect you would only eat it… I’ve had to eat my words before and it’s not a particularly pleasant experience… trust me.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
an epistolary pantoum, to mark the occasion
Dearest Micah:
I write these lines
while you’re sleeping,
first time in my keeping.
I write these lines
having rocked you to sleep,
first time in my keeping,
listening to you breathing.
Having rocked you to sleep,
these moments, ever sweet,
listening to you breathing
—I am complete.
These moments, ever sweet
while you’re sleeping.
I am complete,
dearest Micah.
My precious Micah, 4 mos. 3/7/2022. #FrannaMagic
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
To write a pantoum, use this line sequence:
1234 2546 5768 7381
Early Sunday morning, on my way to church, the sky’s overcast but sun rays are peeking through, all set to teach the lesson on what constitutes a “hero” and while the best-known characteristic may be courage (which is not the absence of fear but acting bravely in spite of it), not to mention self-sacrifice, then perhaps the least recognized is humility, throwing off the mantle of leadership to be a servant, it’s all a matter of the spirit, service… and as I drive past barns, fields, pastures, the green, green grass hints of imminent spring, making my heart rejoice, as do the horses tossing their manes when I pass, surely shaking off sleep and the night, greeting the day as if to say Good morning, good morning, not to mention that I have just enough time to make choir practice before I teach, for we are finally singing as a choir again after two long years, and look at all these robins flocking by the roadside, taking flight as I round the bend, maybe straightening a curve or two, until I remember something my childhood preacher said: Don’t have a Jesus bumper sticker on your car if you drive like the devil… good thing I have no such sticker, but I’ll slow down a bit just the same…in my bag is a list of prayer requests and petitions to make, knowing the Lord already knows, for He knows all, sees all, is over all, and while there is so much I cannot understand, I am learning, I am always learning, and although words are forever scrolling through my brain, today, my heart needs no words; it just sings, like the birds.
A photo from last summer. In recent weeks a little Carolina wren has been perching on the tip of the cross of one of our two “bird churches,” singing its heart out to the sky. I haven’t been successful in recording this glorious solo… yet.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
a bit of palindrome written to a picture worth much more than a thousand words,
maybe even a thousand infinities, to me
Always
remember how much you’re loved
my child
and child of
my child
remember how much you’re loved
always.
My oldest son and his baby girl, Micah.
He named her. Micah means “Who is like God?”
Answer: No one, no one, no one…
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children… Psalm 103:17
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
The bird at the roadside sat
day after day after day
by the body of his lifetime mate
after she passed away
The naturalist saw him there
day after day after day
’til finally with some rotting meat
she lured the bird away
You must carry on, old boy
carry on carry on carry on
a marvel, how you honor your mate
when she’s carrion carrion carrion
Dedicated to the local buzzard who mourned his dead partner by the roadside. Until this story reached me, I didn’t know that turkey buzzards mate for life. I’ve since learned that they lack vocal organs…they cannot call or sing or cry. They can only grunt and hiss as they go about the humble work of cleaning up carcasses…but not, apparently, those of their mates.
Photo: 11 Turkey Buzzard Pittsboro NC 9425. bobistraveling. CC BY 2.0.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March. This is my sixth year participating.
Haiku in Honor of My Six-Year-Old Granddaughter
Whose Favorite Color Is Green
Riding in the car
I muse aloud: Look how green
the fields are today.
From the carseat: Yes.
Greenest green I’ve ever seen.
—Children are poets.
Photo: The sunset of the green field. Bardia Photography. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March. This is my sixth year participating.
Breakfast duty at school… I see raised hands.
I go over.
I am expecting one of the following:
I can’t open my milk.
I can’t open this [bag of apple slices].
Can I have a paper towel? I spilled my ____.
Can I have a cup of water/a spoon/a fork/ another biscuit?
I have my responses ready:
Have you tried?
Have you tried?
How did this happen?
Put on your mask and go get it (x3)… and sorry, you only get one.
This is what happens, however, when I get to the little girl sitting with her sister and cousin:
Child: Look, my apple has a z on it.
Me: A z?
[Child holds up apple slice. Peel has been nibbled so that, yes, a sort of letter z remains]
Me: Wow, that IS a z. I guess you could say z is for apple. No—zapple!
[Child giggles]
Child: Yeah, I can eat it and have magic powers. [waggles fingers in air like a magician. Of sorts]
Older Sister [in spite of herself]: Yeah, you can go ZAP! [performs a ZAP with an air wand]
Even Older Cousin [even more in spite of herself]: Or, you could ZOOM.
Me: Ooo, yes! After eating the zapple, you could zap and zoom down the hall to discover a zebra peeking out of a room…
[offstage light shines on the faces of all three children]
Me [seizing the moment]: That would make a great story, wouldn’t it?
Even Older Cousin [with a determined nod]: I’m gonna start typing it on my Chromebook as soon as I get to class…
I leave them talking excitedly about What Happens Next.
Zapples clearly are magical.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Zapple… er, Slice of LIFE Story Challenge every day in the month of March. This is my sixth year participating.
a combination Slice of Life & Spiritual Journey offering
I grew up hating ashes.
They were a part of my everyday life.
My parents were smokers. Salem menthols. When their friends came over or when some of my mother’s family gathered at our house, smoke hung in the air, thicker than fog, like some conjured ghost constantly materializing, encompassing, lingering…
Sometimes I was given the chore of cleaning out the ashtrays. A debasing job. Dirty. Ashes are pervasive. Everywhere and never really gone, no matter how hard you try. Even now, remembering, the stench is my nose, the metallic taste on my tongue…
It would be a long time before I’d learn the seeming incongruity of ashes as the main ingredient of an age-old cleansing agent. Lye. Which was also used to make hominy and that Southern staple, grits. In spite of my heritage, I never learned to like them.
It took me longer still to understand ashes as symbolizing something holy. Ash Wednesday and Lent weren’t part of my Protestant church or family tradition.
I got the humility part early on, however. From stories. First there was Cinderella, named for the soot that clung to her skin and her clothes from ashes that she (too!) was relegated to cleaning. Ashes are pervasive… then the Bible. Job, stricken with boils, scraping himself with broken pottery, sitting in the ashes. The repentant king of Nineveh mandating sackcloth and ashes after revival preached by the pouting prophet Jonah. Eventually, the vivid image of Tamar placing ashes on her head, sobbing, in utter humiliation and grief after the assault by her half-brother. Priests were commanded to change out of their sacred garments before disposing of burnt offering ashes.
Ashes are pervasive…
At fifteen I stood outside watching flakes falling from the sky in late May. Not snow at that time of year, in the southeastern United States. Ash. From the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s on the other side of the country. The volcano’s side exploded with such force that plumes of ash rocketed skyward for miles. The snowlike flakes settled across the nation and parts of Canada. I caught these curiosities in my hands. They didn’t melt. They looked to me like flakes of human skin.
I thought of war.
I think of war now. As I write, scenes are all over the TV. Bombs. Destruction. Death. What once was, now in ashes.
I think of the gorgeous churches of Kyiv.
I think of the dead.
My second son is a recently-certified crematory operator. Traditional burials are steadily giving way to cremations now. One day I went with him and watched while he placed someone’s ashes in an engraved box urn. These ashes are different from other kinds. Pale powder, fine as talcum. One of the most reverent acts I’ve ever witnessed, my boy tenderly packing that human dust.
The ancient Romans had a saying, Memento mori. Remember that you die. It is the same idea behind Ash Wednesday rites: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, echoing God’s words to Adam in Genesis 3:19, after the Fall.
I’ve never had a cross of ashes placed on my head by a priest, but I understand the call to repentance. It echoes deep in my bones. I know the desperate desire for holiness in the face of raging unholiness. The need for whole–ness. I believe in repent and believe. I do. I repent. I believe.
I believe there’s an eventual reckoning.
Ashes are pervasive.
Volcano ash man. @Doug88888.CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March. This is my sixth year participating.
Thanks also to my Spiritual Journey writing friends and to Ruth Hersey in Paraguay for hosting on the first Thursday in March. Ruth chose the theme “ashes” in connection with Ash Wednesday (which is why my post is going up a day early this month).
lit bits and pieces 