Month: April 2025

Finding a safe harbor poem

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

National Poetry Month continues, and while I have been writing a poem each day in April, I have not posted them all here on the blog.

Today I return to post about “safe harbors.”

Yesterday for VerseLove at Ethical ELA, poet Padma Venkatraman offered this prompt along with her own beautiful work as an example: “Think about a place that feels like a safe harbor to you – and bring that space alive in a poem.”

Ah. I knew exactly what to write about…

Haven

I should convert
one of the boys’
old bedrooms
to a study
where I can write
with fewer
interruptions

but here
at the kitchen table
is my place

here
there are windows
all around

I open the blinds
while it is yet dark

inviting the light
before its return

bringing with it, birds
rippling with song
praise for the morning
and the new day

these colorful
feathered visitors
peer in my windows
from time to time
like curious, bright-eyed
Muses

—yes, I am here
—yes, I see you, too

and sometimes
when my husband
turns on the TV
in the living room
I grow weary
of the news
and sports

but when
he goes away
he leaves music playing
for the puppy

playing under my chair
little ball of golden fluff
having dragged every toy
he owns
to my feet

where he whimpers
just now
to be held

and so I pick him up

he curls in my lap
while I write
to the background song
a’rippling:

If my words did glow
with the gold of sunshine…

yeah, the Grateful Dead…

here in my place
my beloved space

I write

ever grateful, alive.

******

Lyrics: “Ripple,” Robert Hunter/Jerome Garcia, 1970.

My Jesse

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Progressive poem 2025

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

I am honored to be part of a writing community creating a progressive poem throughout the month of April. There are thirty of us, and we each add a line when our day comes.

I am the twelfth. The final line in bold is mine…interesting to watch the poem taking shape! And in which direction will it go next?

*******

Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air
stippling every dogwood
dappling daffodils with flair

Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming Sweetgum.

Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilacs and phlox
commune without constraints

-Now I hand the poem off to Cathy Stenquist!

Here are the contributors for the month:

April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/
April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog
April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at TanitasDavis.com
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

Spiritual Journey: Lament

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

For Spiritual Journey Thursday (the first Thursday of each month), a fellow writer offers a topic for our group to reflect on individually. Then we write and share.

Today Ruth Hersey offers this: The topic I chose today, given that we’re in the second half of Lent, is Lament. The world has plenty to lament right now, and I suggest writing a Psalm of Lament…Aaron Niequist say[s] that a third of the Psalms in the Bible are about lament, whereas zero percent of modern worship songs are. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever written a lament.

Biblically speaking, they follow a general pattern:

  1. An address to God
  2. A complaint
  3. A request for help
  4. Expressing trust in God

And so I started with the following. I almost deleted it, but am choosing to leave it as a record of my thinking and my heart:

Oh Lord, my God
Creator of all
you have always been there

before the beginning
and never-ending

you have aways been there

in my joy
in my pain
in my sorrow
in my rage

you were there

before I knew You
when I forgot You
when I ran from you

and when I ran to you

you were there…

I know these things to be true; however, I am losing the point of a lament, which is to be an expression of deep sorrow or grief, yet not without hope, and not without seeking the Lord and ultimately trusting. I think I struggle with laments because their anguished cries to God can sound somewhat accusatory. That is not the tone I want. It feels like misplaced blame.

And so I turned to Psalm 13. It is the model for my second lament attempt, here…

How long, Lord, will I forget that You are here in the midst?
    How long will I try to carry my burdens alone?
How long will I grieve the ways of the world
     with human judgment clouding my heart?
 How long will my own flawed perspective blind me?

Look on me with mercy, oh Lord my God.
    Give me Your light, that I might see
Your ways, Your workings, unaffected by humanity
    which makes of itself an enemy.

Only in You do I wholly trust
    for only holy You never fail.
Grant me wisdom, strength, and grace all my days
    to live each one remembering and honoring You.

…it is still a work in progress, as are we all, thanks be to God, whose mercies endure forever.

Psalm 139 is my favorite of the psalms; I close here with its final verses as part of my daily prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Spring verse

/ Fran Haley / 3 Comments

On the second day of National Poetry Month, Leilya Pitre hosts VerseLove at Ethical ELA. She offers this poetic prompt:

A tricube consists of three stanzas, each with three lines, and each line having three syllables—quick, rhythmic, and focused. It’s easy to remember as 3:3:3.

Begin by answering the question: What does spring mean to you?

I think I have an answer…

Spring’s Message

Morning sky
streaked rose-gold:
heaven’s yawn

Birdsong praise
rising on
wings of dawn

Green-robed earth
resurrects—
loss is gone

Versegathering

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

April is National Poetry Month, and today on Ethical ELA, VerseLove begins. Jennifer Guyor Jowett kicks off the daily poetry-writing with this invitation:

As poets, we are noticers of words and verses. They catch our attention. They resonate. They allow us to breathe. They sing in a world stuck in B flat…Find verses that you love, that speak to you. Collect them in a pile or a list. Shuffle them into a new poem. 

A poem of completely borrowed lines is known as a “cento,'” Latin for “patchwork.”

Here’s my collection:

Lightgathering

A certain light does a certain thing
as the bird wings and sings.
I saw color and I saw a story. I saw a face
and I knew a lifetime
as each separate dying ember wrought its ghost
upon the floor.

Come to me…the light is fading;
don’t you see the evening star appearing?
Enough of pointing to the world,
weary and desperate.
Love that well which thou must leave ere long
for love is as strong as death.

*******

  1. Ada Limón, “The End of Poetry”
  2. Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra”
  3. Ntozake Shange, Riding the Moon in Texas: Word Paintings
  4. “
  5. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
  6. “
  7. Lyrics, ”Fantine’s Death,” Les Misérables, Hathaway & Jackman
  8. “
  9. Ada Limón, “The End of Poetry”
  10. “
  11. Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
  12. Song of Solomon 8:6

*******

with thanks also, and again, to Two Writing Teachers…today is Slice of Life Tuesday,
right on the heels of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge!