Today’s post is inspired by Kim Johnson, who’s organizing a community event for National Poetry Month. Her local arts council chose the theme of “Awakenings” and in her Slice of Life Story Challenge post of March 12th, Kim sent out a call for short poems of 4-6 lines. Featured poems will be displayed on canvases in windows around the town square throughout April.
Kim: Here’s to power of awakenings, poetry, and community! Much success to you, my friend, and all involved in this exciting event.
Now…how might I play some little variations on this theme, let’s say, with snippets of my life?
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awakening (plural awakenings)
noun
the point of morning coffee (may require more than one cup)
a soul-spark generated by infinite possibility
a heart condition caused by beautiful language
(plural) the celebration of poetry at a local literacy event
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Sisters Seeing
One winter’s night, when I was ten, I dreamed of an angel. My little sister stood by me at the window, watching it pass. Morning brought this revelation: she had dreamed of it, too.
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First Rhythms
Love of words was born in me upon my grandmother’s lap reading stories in rhyme rocking chair keeping time with the beating of her heart.
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Cicada Rhythms
High in the oaks against the bluest of skies the rattling swells as its season dies. A paradox, this buzzing call from amid the leaves, soon to fall. This song of my childhood, lingering still in the last of the light, before the chill. Full force, cicada sings—don’t you know? —summer’s gone on the wings of a song long ago.
Yet it returns, when you rise from the ground Awaking the child I was, with that sound.
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Lullaby for My Granddaughter
Precious darling, while you’re sleeping I’ll be here, safe watch a’keeping This time is such a fleeting thing When you awaken, love, let’s sing.
My precious Micah after I sang her to sleep
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Composed for Day 27 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
with thanks to Denise Krebs for inspiring the Dictionary Entry poem
Over at Ethical ELA last month, host Amber Harrison invited Open Write participants to compose a poem inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.
The idea being to fill in these blanks:
I celebrate____.
And what I _______you _____. For every ___________ me as good _______ you.
My poem:
Grandmothering
I celebrate the immutable now.
And what I pour of myself, you drink—a transubstantiation of sorts, blood-memory in the making.
For every day, in passing, decreases me as good as it increases you.
As anyone in a writing community knows, giving and receiving comments is the stuff we feed on to keep going. One of my fellow Open Write participants (“tellio”) offered this astonishing reponse to my poem:
Here is an explication of your poem by the AI Perplexity. It is, in a way a backfilling in of the lines. I wonder what Uncle Walty would make of it.
“Grandmothering” is a poem that delves into the profound connection between generations, particularly the relationship between a grandmother and her grandchild. The poem celebrates the present moment, emphasizing its unchanging nature, hence the phrase “the immutable now.” The act of sharing and passing on experiences, wisdom, and love is likened to a sacred transformation, described as a “transubstantiation of sorts,” evoking the religious concept of the Eucharist, where bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.
The line “And what I pour of myself, you drink” vividly captures the idea of the grandmother imparting her essence to her grandchild, who receives it eagerly and completely. This exchange is described as a “blood-memory in the making,” suggesting that the bond between them is not only emotional and intellectual but also deeply rooted in their shared heritage and lineage.
The final two lines, “For every day, in passing, decreases me as good as it increases you,” encapsulate the bittersweet reality of this intergenerational relationship. As the grandmother imparts her knowledge and love to her grandchild, she recognizes that her own time and energy are finite. Each day that passes diminishes her own vitality and presence, yet simultaneously enriches and empowers the younger generation. In essence,“Grandmothering” beautifully captures the timeless cycle of giving and receiving between generations, acknowledging both the sacrifices and the joys inherent in this process. It speaks to the enduring significance of familial connections and the profound impact of legacy and heritage on our lives.
Oh, Perplexity. You have me weeping over the way you’ve pulled all that’s behind the poem and in my heart out into the open. How profoundly you understand the depths of my soul.
And you aren’t even human.
Or alive.
I celebrate the immutable now
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Composed for Day 18 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
Last summer, when she was just a year-and-three quarters old, I showed her a clip of a squealing baby otter in water for the first time (I find this scenario confusing but I’ve chosen to accept it for the time being).
Her dad, my son, recorded her reaction…oh, and that’s Dennis, of course. He has to be in the middle of everything:
On every subsequent visit, Micah has asked to see the baby otter.
I’ve played the clip a million times.
Naturally I started buying her otter toys.
Micah’s Mama gave her the CUTEST otter bedroom slippers for her second birthday (I so wish I had a photo; I must get one).
Imagine my delight upon finding this blanket at Christmastime:
Micah adores it so much that she must have it now to go to sleep.
This gives my Franna-heart so much joy, as she’s struggled with going to sleep all of her little life.
When she stays at my house, she will crawl into my lap and say, “Snuggle. Need baby otter blanket.”
So I carry her to retrieve it. We return to the sofa. I wrap the baby otters around her, rocking gently, gently, until she drifts off.
And I will hold her for ever how long it takes, until she wakes.
Once in a while There comes a creature so wondrous That you will hold it close forever Embracing joy, erasing fear… Rest here against Franna’s beating heart Sleep, my darling, sleep.
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Composed for Day 12 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
Let them be a memento of the first day I came to see you and of God’s divine grace.
I shall keep them for you until such time that you can understand the story.
I picked them up, brought them home, and washed them. Never mind that we’re not Catholic, your father and grandfather being Baptist preachers.
Considering the significance of my visit, their appearing seemed a rare and holy thing.
A set of rosary beads, right there in the parking lot, with no one else in sight. Perhaps meant for a child, as the beads are plastic, mostly bright blue, with six orange, three green, and a little white crucifix.
When I left the hospital to head home, the rain had ended. The sun sparkled on the wet pavement. My heart danced with the beauty of the day, of the whole world. I stepped gingerly around puddled water shimmering with rainbow swirls, and that’s when I saw it.
Grandparents and grandchildren are a special gift to each other, especially if many years together are granted. Time to love, to live all our own stories, to always be close ’til you’re all grown up and I must go… this is my prayer.
I sat in a chair and your dad placed you in my arms. Joy and awe flooded my very soul…my cup runneth over, and over. I could have held you forever and it wouldn’t have been enough.
And there you were…so little, so perfect…I’d cried when your dad texted the first photos on the previous day. Now, seeing you with my own eyes, I could hear my grandmother’s voice, her narrative: You looked just like a little angel. And that’s exactly how you looked to me, my beautiful Micah. A heavenly being sent straight from the hands of almighty God.
Down came a gentle rainfall, spattering the windshield as I flew to the hospital that morning…once I answered the COVID questions and passed the temperature check upon arriving, I was allowed to go the room.
The end of October is a lovely time of year here in North Carolina, when the sky takes on sapphire hues. I wore a light raincoat because the meterologists predicted sprinkling.
I had to wait until the day after you were born to come see you.
You came during the pandemic. The world struggled with masks and distancing. The hospital limited visitors to two a day…and your dad counted as one.
My grandmother loved to tell me the story of my birth. I shall love telling you yours.
Me holding Micah for the first time.
******* Composed for Day 9 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
Children we realize behind those eyes lies a universe of possibility
My granddaughter, Micah, age 2.
As educators, writers, human beings…let us not fail to see the value and potential of every child.
Let us not fail to help them see.
With thanks to two fellow Slicers in the daily March challenge:
Margaret Simon, for continous inspiration with the elfchen or “elevenie” poem form; and Thomas Ferrebee, for the phrase “universe of possiblities” in his post yesterday, describing a Chilean rhubarb plant.
With special thanks to my precious Micah-roni for exponentially expanding my universe, and who spent all day Tuesday with me, which explains the brevity of this post.
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Composed for Day 6 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
Once upon a time, which is now, the second summer of your being, you reign supreme in the province of Franna’s house. Each day holds untold wonders. Every moment is rimmed with pure gold; with every tick of the clock, you are gaining strength and power.
Speaking of which: You are enchanted by the grandfather clock in the foyer, even though it’s not working at present. You have discovered, if you stand close enough and jump hard enough, the bells will chime for you.
You are so proud of the two ponies you wear in your hair. When you are in your bed, fighting sleep, you pull the ponies out.
You are a study in language acquisition and word associations. Homonyms don’t throw you. Rock, for example. You understand perfectly well it means the big gray thing out by the woods as well as the movement of the white chairs on the porch. It’s one of your favorite things to do; a dozen times a day, you have your hand on the front door handle, asking to rock.
Another dozen times a day, you hold your hands up to me (got you) with the directive Watch. Birds. And I hold you at the windows where we watched the bluebirds going in and out of their house from early spring to summer, feeding two successive broods of babies until they fledged and flew. You mimic my whisper: Watch. Watch. You became especially fond of the Dada bird, so vibrantly blue, and you knew he was helping to feed his babies (often with a big bug in his beak).
Then you see Grampa in the rocking chair. He’s wearing his big black wristwatch. Your big brown eyes (so like your father’s, so like mine) miss nothing: Grampa watch. A thought flickers across your face. I get it, you say. Back in the house you go, looking for my watch on the kitchen table where it’s charging in a patch of sunlight. You slide it onto your little arm and hold it up with pride: Watch.
You don’t yet know about time. Tempus fugit, says the face of the grandfather clock. Time flies.
You will know this soon enough. For now you are exploring all the windows of your world. On tiptoe.
You know love. You rock your dolls (babies). You see the Gerber baby on the packet of yogurt melts that Franna always, always keeps on hand. Awww, Baby, you say.
You hug the Gerber baby, too.
Your curiosity knows no bounds. It outweighs your fears. You say loud when a plane flies over; you cover your ears, but you love planes. When they disappear from view, you say Bye, plane. You keep looking for another.
This week a helicopter flew over Franna’s yard and utterly captivated you. You are grappling with that word, helicopter (Franna understands it even if others can’t yet).
The hammering of the new deck construction is loud but you have found a just-right seat on the telescope base to watch the man working.
The Lowry organ in Franna’s living room is way too loud for you so we don’t turn it on; you are perfectly happy sitting on the bench, pressing the silent keys, flipping the couplers (that control pedals, special effects, swell, and great) up and down. That is, in fact, what you call the organ: up down.
You are learning to question. If a toy rolls under a table or bed: Where’d it go? When there are no birds outside the window, you call in your singsong voice: Birds, where are you? When you want to watch a music video on my phone, you pat my pockets or stick your hands between the sofa cushions: Where is it? Phont. I get it.
For you adore music. You sing. You dance. You ask for specific song videos (we know exactly what these are, don’t we): Na Na Na, Sunny Day, Shine, Ba Ba Minion, Giant, B-I-B-L-E. Not to mention do-do-do-do-doot-doot-do Bluey on TV.
You play drums with spatulas on my big kitchen bowls. One two, you say. We are working on three four.
You want to do the things you see your big sister doing. This summer, at age seven, she taught Franna how to play chess.
You are determined to play, too.
One of your newest words is try. You so want to do things for yourself. At twenty months you aren’t a baby anymore. Although you still like to be held. A lot.
You try. You watch. You shine. You show your love by curling your little body around your Franna so you can’t be put down. So Franna holds you for as long as you like.
Your Dada tells me that you are refusing naps at home and that you lie in your crib crying Frannaaaaaa…!
This is a great thing to your Franna. A very great thing.
Every moment of every day, you are doing great things.
I write them here for you, thinking of all the great things yet to be.
For that is what grandmothers are, memory-keepers.
Until the time your memories become your own, while we live this story of our beautiful once upon a time, which is now, oh, I cherish the keeping.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge
And so it comes to pass, at long last, that I return to the site of my sun-kissed childhood summers.
My ancestral homeplace in eastern North Carolina. Literally the land of my fathers: My dad, my grandparents, my great-parents, my great-greats were all born within a small radius of a tiny town and crossroads that were old long before my appearance on this Earth.
Thus began my fascination with Time.
In the bend of a dirt road stood my grandparents’ home, where my father grew up. My youngest aunt was born here in the same room where her father, my Granddaddy, would die fifty-three years later at 92. He wanted to die at home. He did, peacefully and “full of days,” as the Scriptures say of Abraham, Isaac, and Job: After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days (Job 42:16-17).
Likewise, my grandparents saw four generations. They lived to see my children. Incidentally, Granddaddy had a brother named Job who died in the 1920s (he drowned, if I recall correctly; this is a coastal area).
So it was that I grew up on stories of the old days and ways, a little city girl mesmerized by my deep country roots. In my time the once-thriving community was already history; nature was reclaiming the unpainted houses, one by one. Some were still visible through the woods (an early memory: a cypress shingle roof in the treetops, if you looked just right) and others were in various stages of falling down with yards still mowed by descendants.
On this return journey a few weeks ago, I discovered that my grandmother’s homeplace from the early 1900s is being swallowed by the forest:
A terrible jolt, as I can remember it having a hedge, a lawn, a porch swing, a screen door. I remember the layout inside and my great-uncle living there, tending to a patch of sunflowers.
And I knew, prior to this journey, that my grandparents’ house, which stood on the corner a little farther on, is gone.
This story is a little different, however. Instead of the forest reaching its veiny green fingers to reclaim its own, a young couple has built a home right in the middle of what was once my grandfather’s garden. I can’t help thinking how Grandma would marvel at the beauty of this new house and its lovely landscaping.
All that remains here from the enchanted summers of my childhood half a century ago (and from time before me) is the pumphouse, one of Grandma’s crepe myrtles (now wistfully draped in Spanish moss, which never used to be in these parts), and the sidewalk that once led to the front porch of Granddaddy and Grandma’s home:
As a teenager I wrote a song about a sidewalk. Haven’t thought about it in ages:
Where does this lonely sidewalk lead? You think by now I’d know Footsteps into yesterday That’s where I want to go…
I had no idea, then, that only the sidewalk would remain in this place I loved so well, where I used to play outside in the sweltering bug-infested heat, where Grandma would sit at her piano in the evenings to have me sing old hymns with her as Granddaddy listened from his recliner, where I felt loved and wanted and sheltered and that I belonged…
The old dirt road remains, too, of course.
There was another dirt road branching off of it here in the shadows to the left; it once led, Grandma said, to a two-story antebellum house with a double balcony. I could hear admiration for that house in her voice. In my childhood the road was just two tracks through grass and thickets. The path faded more and more with every passing summer. Now you would never know it had ever been anything but woods.
From this vantage point, my grandparents’ yard is on the right, and to the immediate left is an old family cemetery. Not my family’s, although I walked it often with Grandma over the years. When I was a child, I was afraid ghosts would come out here at night. Grandma assured me they would not. She offered this dubious comfort: No need to fear the dead. Fear the living.
When I wondered at the graves of so many babies, she said people just didn’t know what to do for them when they were sick.
It’s clear how much the children were loved and mourned. This tiny cemetery remains painstakingly tended and strangely outside of time:
Hello again, baby Leafy Jean and big brother Leon Russell.
These siblings died a month apart in 1917. Grandma was born three months after Leon, almost a year to the day before Leafy, in the soon-to-be obscured homeplace just around the bend of the road.
Four-month-old twins Audrie and Aubrie died a week apart during that same summer.
The greater wonder, in its way, are the children who survived disease and mothers who died giving birth to them, which almost happened to Grandma: her mother delivered a stillborn baby three months before she was born. My grandmother was a twin. Grandma journaled this because I asked her to; in her writings, she says several women in the community who recently had babies helped nurse her while my great-grandmother was so ill that she “almost didn’t make it.”
—Why am I just now realizing that Grandma’s lost twin would have come around the same time as Leon Russell? Could his mother have been one of the women who preserved my newborn grandmother’s hungry life? if so …imagine saving someone else’s child and losing your own…
So many mysteries in this place. I’ve always felt the pull.
Over fifty years after I first walked this cemetery with my grandmother, I’m awed by the good condition of the headstones. I halfway expected them to be eroding into illegibility — after all, these people’s earthly homes have long since crumbled. No greater mystery than Time…
I cannot linger here, ruminating, for there’s another place to visit. Really just a good walk “around the horn” to the church, a journey I’ve made many times.
This was once the heart of the bustling farm community. The church was built on land given by my grandmother’s predecessors. Her father, mother, brothers, and other family are buried to the right of this crossroads.
Granddaddy and Grandma are buried in the churchyard, to the left.
Such a beautiful little resting place, presently bordered by a lush cornfield. An old live oak felled by a hurricane in recent years has been replaced by a new one nearby.
Grandma would be so pleased to see how well-tended everything is.
There’s even a new footbridge over the ditch at the churchyard, for easy access to the little community center across the road. This building stands where Grandma’s three-room grade school used to, she said in her journal.
Here’s where old and new converge most for me, where Time is most relevant and paradoxically elusive. The spirit of this place is old; my own memories are growing old.
My father as a teenager, in the churchyard
I am the keeper of memories older than mine.
But I came for the new.
I brought my granddaughter, you see.
All along the journey, I told her stories. Of the old days, the old ways.
I brought her to dig for fossils at the Museum in town (which is where the phosphate mining company sends its rejects now, instead of scattering treasures on the old dirt roads).
We found a bit of coral skeleton, shark’s teeth, and some bony things I’ve yet to identify:
Making new memories from the old… even from the ancient, from time before recorded time.
As we were leaving, I discovered that the old library in this old, old town looks the same as it did five decades ago when Grandma drove me to pick out books to read at her house in the summer. I halfway expected to see her coming out with the armful she had to help me carry…
And I think this is used to be, or is at least near, the butcher shop where Daddy worked as a teenager.
There’s so much more to be said about memory, legacy, endurance, overcoming, and family… about the whole spiritual journey of life. The greatest gift my grandparents gave me, beyond their unconditional love and their stories, is that of faith lived out. I learned long ago that eventually there comes a homecoming so bright, so glorious, that all the former shadows are forgotten.
I expect I’ll recognize my little corner of Heaven, having had such a foretaste here.
Until that time, I carry on in the footsteps before me, praying I walk even half as well.
My now, my tomorrows ❤
From Everlasting to Everlasting: A Prayer of Moses
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night…
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! Psalm 90: 1-4;16-17
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with thanks to my Spiritual Journey friends who write on the first Thursday of each month and to host Carol Varsalona who posted this reflection and question for July:
Pause and praise God for His wondrous gifts! What are you rejoicing over this summer?
with thanks to my Spiritual Journey writer-friends who gather on the first Thursday of each month, and to Chris Margocs for leading today with the theme of “Shall we dance?”
Today my heart dances. Even as I write these words, I am preparing to attend a chapel service in which my firstborn will be honored. He completed a Master of Divinity degree last December and the seminary faculty selects one graduate for the Pastoral Leadership award. My son was chosen.
Today, with the Spiritual Journey theme of Shall we dance, I recall Miriam, the sister of Moses. In Exodus 15:20-21 she led the women in a victory dance, echoing her brother’s song of praise to God for salvation from Pharaoh’s army in the miraculous parting of the Red Sea:
I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:1-2)
Today I think about the journey my husband and I have made. We’d been married less than two years when we rededicated our lives to God and my husband became a pastor. I was twenty-two; he was twenty-five. So much story to tell…all these years later, I stand in awe of the sustaining hand of God and His wondrous provision, grace, and mercy.
Our son named his firstborn daughter Micah, which means Who is like God? Answer: No one. And our little Micah, age eighteen months, loves nothing better than music and dancing. Except maybe food…
Today is a day of victory and praise for all that God has done, and continues to do, in the life of my family.
Today I dance…
I offer it in the form of a pantoum.
Dance, dance, dance! Who is like God? No one. No one. He is beside you, behind you, before you.
Who is like God? In the giving and forgiving He is beside you, behind you, before you. None of the sacrifices
in the giving and forgiving of all your beloveds —none of the sacrifices can do for you what God has done.
Of all your beloveds no one, no one can do for you what God has done— dance, dance, dance!
lit bits and pieces 