Fran Haley

Life’s a cupcake

/ Fran Haley / 25 Comments

Some time ago, I had my nails polished in a pale color delightfully named “Life’s a Cupcake.”

I’ve been hanging onto that, in case I ever decided to write something out of it.

—Why not today?

If Life’s a cupcake
then use real sugar.

If Life’s a cupcake
then add your own flavor.

If Life’s a cupcake
then try not to burn it.

If Life’s a cupcake
then savor the filling.

If Life’s a cupcake
then frost it thick with love.

If Life’s a cupcake
then offer it to others.

If Life’s a cupcake
then eat every crumb.

My sweet Scout, summer before last

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Composed for Day 15 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

–oh, if you’re curious about the nail color, check it out: Life’s a Cupcake polish.
Note the brand name, “Creative Play”—how fitting!

Moments

/ Fran Haley / 27 Comments

Lines of an old hymn often play in my head:

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while I get ready for work each morning, where, of late, there’s a heavy atmosphere of uncertainty and despair.

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while having to drive through town instead of the scenic route by the pond, where the great blue heron lives, because a bridge is out, I’m told, for maybe a year or more (how can this be?).

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it while noticing and grieving dead animals by the roadside… beaver, groundhog, opossum, squirrel, cottontail rabbit, white-tail deer, dog, cat; a hawk that flew too low at the wrong time, its wide pale wing, patterned in distinctive dark-brown bars, angled up and over its body like a shroud; and so many skunks, their beautiful black-and-white fur rippling in the wind…sluggish from hibernation, they wandered into the road, never to wake again.

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me…

I hear it when I’m running late and traffic in the heart of town is backed up to an absurd degree (of course), making me turn off the main road for a side road, to save a few minutes…

That’s when I see the mural:


An ethereal moment calls for an etheree…

Breathe
deeply.
The moments
are soon passing
from you and from me…
let’s use them, not lose them
for every precious minute
sings unwritten song within it.
Breathe, and appreciate the moment.
Each, in itself, a sign of the divine.

Funny thing…I see the “Breathe” message on a most difficult morning; on the drive home that afternoon, just past the mural, a great blue heron passes overhead, strangely low and close. I have never seen one here before. It looks otherworldly, ancient, sailing along serenely, impossibly, with barely a beat of its wings.

great blue heron glides
on slow wingbeats of wisdom
breathing the moment

Great Blue Heron in Flight – (Ardea herodias). Milazzoyo. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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Composed for Day 14 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Nature’s divine voice

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

“Nature is the infrastructure of our communities…Nature enriches us economically and culturally and historically, but it also enriches us spiritually. God talks to human beings through many vectors: Through organized religions and the great books of those religions, through the prophets and wise people, and through art and literature and music and poetry, but nowhere with the same detail and texture and grace and joy as through Creation. And when we destroy nature, we impoverish our children. We diminish their capacity—and our own—to sense the Divine, to understand who God is, and to grasp what our own potential is as human beings.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Confession

Before I started writing
in earnest
I didn’t know
how much
I love nature

I should have known
by the way
cicada summersong
stirs sacred memories

I should have known
by the certain slant
of light
on fiery autumn trees
there’s hope within
which never leaves

I should have known
from the brilliant beckoning
of silversharp stars
on a clear winter’s night
or by Venus,
glittering bright
over the ocean
as the sun rises
that the soul
must keep reaching
for what it cannot
grasp

I should have known
that once I start seeking
I will find
just as I discover hawks
perched high above me
every single time
I think to look up

I should have known
by the poignant scent
of fallen pines
and freshcut grass
that newness
returns
after the pain

I should have known
how much humans
have lost
by not living close
to the earth
as we were meant to
(as we did, in ages past)
or how this void
is behind
the longing
of every soul
crying out
for belonging
healing
restoration
and peace

I should have known
all things
are interconnected
and sustained

by the voice
speaking through
nature…

Before I started writing
in earnest
I didn’t know
how much
I love nature

but the important thing
is that I know it now

I will always know it, now

for, like finchsong
at my door,
untold glories
surround me

weaving their way
into my writings
so that I recognize
holy rhythms
of life

spoken into being
into my being

—let me listen
oh, let me listen.

One of last year’s baby bluebirds hanging out by its natal home, on my back deck

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Composed for Day 13 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Otters

/ Fran Haley / 15 Comments

My granddaughter, Micah, loves otters.

It is my fault.

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

Poetry possum

/ Fran Haley / 13 Comments

Once upon a time (last fall), we had a family event at my school featuring Poetry Fox.

Forgive if this disturbs the enchanting image in your brain: He’s a guy in a well-worn fox costume who cranks out poems on the spot, using an old-timey typewriter.

Just give him a word, and clickety-clickety-click, slam! —he types your own personal poem on a piece of paper suitable for framing.

You will want to frame it, because Poetry Fox is amazing.

My new assistant principal stood by, watching in sheer wonderment. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he admitted. “But this…this is magic.”

Indeed. Kid faces and parent faces glowed. In a word…awe.

Afterward, my AP joked: “Hey, if we ever want to do this again and Poetry Fox isn’t available, maybe I could scrounge up a costume…not a fox, of course…some lesser creature…”

The thing was born in my head, right that very instant: “You could be Poetry Possum!”

Today, Ladies and Gentlemen, Girls and Boys, One and All… I am proud to announce the debut of a character who certainly needs to live in stories (and poems) of his own:

I give you… (drumroll)…Poetry Possum and his very first work!

There once was a fuzzy gray creature
It is ME! A poetry teacher!
With just a little travail
I’ll bet my prehensile tail
Wordcraft will become your best feature!

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Composed for Day 11 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

If you want to read more about Poetry Fox, you can do so here.

Q: What to write now?

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

WordPress, the content management system for my blog, regularly offers prompts to writers. A way to get the creative juices flowing, you know… and to connect people through sharing their stories.

For, as my fellow Slicers of Life can tell you, stories knit our hearts together like nothing else. Stories are the fabric of our lives, the storehouse of our memories, and one of our most creative endeavors. They are the way we see and shape our world. They shape us. Stories are among humankind’s greatest tools and gifts.

To that end: It occurs to me that a little inspiration might be needed for the Slice of Life Story Challenge. After ten days of writing, some of us may be running low on fuel. Here are a few WordPress prompts, just in case anyone out there can can use them…

  1. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
  2. You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
  3. What’s one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
  4. Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?
  5. What big events have taken place in your life over the last year?

Confession: It would be soooo convenient to end this post here and make another to answer my favorite of these questions (i..e, stretching this post into two; one DOES have to be strategic during a challenge), but the teacher-writer in me says You know you have to show, not just tell.

All right, all right.

My favorite from this list is #2: You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

A: I have no idea.

First of all, not sure writing my autobiography is a venture I desire to undertake. A memoir, perhaps…a memoir in verse, even more appealing, but…hmmm. You writers know what our greatest fear is, don’t you: Will anyone really read it? Or care?

Which brings me to the point that this is a secondary concern.

Because…write for you first. Capture the words emerging in your brain like new and fragile butterflies. Jot the images before the rains of time wash them away like chalk from a driveway. Relive your memories; spend time with the people you have loved and lost and will miss all your days…along with the lessons you picked up along the way. Answer the Muse who stands so patiently (exasperatedly?) over you, tugging at your creative human soul where beats your struggling writer-heart. Just because you don’t feel the tug doesn’t mean she’s gone. Oh, she’s there, all right, standing with her arms crossed, tapping her foot.

Enough avoiding the task at hand…how would I start my autobiography?? (I do wish the question was for “memoir,” alas…I’d find it more compelling, even if the world at a large uses the terms interchangeably).

Here I am, stalling, tempted to say Check back tomorrow for the reveal! Truth is, I need to think awhile…

ALL. RIGHT. Here goes…

—Can I please switch questions? Can I answer #3 instead? What’s one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

A: Right now I hate to be asked what the first sentence of my autobiography would be, because I. HAVE. NO. IDEA. Furthermore, I am now asking myself WHY I ever picked it (I suddenly feel like a student trying to write a short essay on an exam after having selected my topic most unwisely).

Sigh.

I set my own foot on this path… so, let me see where it leads (do you hear me, Muse? You gotta take it from here. Please…).

My father named me for his mother, and that was the beginning of everything.

Well… it’s a start.

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Composed for Day 10 of the Slice of Life Story Writing Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
(keep going, y’all!)

Rosary beads

/ Fran Haley / 23 Comments

a backwards story

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.

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Composed for Day 9 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Serene senryu

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

For peace at day’s end
speak little; hold your truths close.
Let sleeping dogs lie.

My granddaughter, Scout, with Dennis the dachshund during a sleepover.

Senryu is Japanese poetry of three lines and 17 morae (syllables), usually arranged 5-7-5, similar to haiku. Traditional haiku is focused on nature, whereas senryu reveals something about the nature of humans in a lively, funny (often “punny”), dark, or ironic way.

Seemed a symbolic way to capture this serene Slice of Life scene.

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Composed for Day 8 of the Slice of Life Story Writing Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

To build or not to build

/ Fran Haley / 8 Comments

Those of you who’ve followed my blog for a while will know that I chronicle the return of house finches to my front door wreath every March. These little songbirds typically build a nest before I know it; they’re incredibly surreptitious. This has been happening for several years. A little pair actually slept in the wreath at night all winter before last, as if staking their homestead claim.

Last April, a tragedy struck and the finches have been scarce ever since. One day, five tiny, beautiful fledglings were thriving in the nest; a week later, all five died without warning. I found them with their yellow beaks opened wide to the sky, quivering; took me a minute to realize they were dead and full of maggots. This was the second seasonal brood for these parents. They’d built the nest and laid the first set of eggs before the end of February (“seems awfully early,” I wrote in my notes). Two of those fledglings died. The very day I removed the nest with the two dead fledglings in it, the parents rebuilt. They worked feverishly, laid five new blue eggs, hatched them, and lost every baby within a couple of weeks.

Seven dead babies in a season…too much for me, maybe for the parents. They vanished. There was no rescuing the wreath; it had to go, nest, dead babies, and all.

For the remainder of the summer my front porch was silent. No melodious trills of finch song. My granddaughters and I watched the bluebirds out back raise two broods (bluebirds are amazingly tenacious, territorial, and extremely loyal to their breeding grounds; they watch us as much as we watch them, almost as if to say Hello, what are you people doing in our yard?).

But the finches are shy. Nervous, even. They nest near people as a defense against predators, but they don’t want to be near people.

Ever since I took down my Christmas wreath and hung an old grapevine wreath with silk magnolias, I’ve been watching and wondering: Will the finches return this year? If they do, will the eggs hatch and will the babies be okay? If not…I don’t think I can handle the grief. I always protect the porch and door for them and yet this thing happened. As much as I love these birds, as precious as they are, I’d rather they nested elsewhere than endure it again.

I realize this is my own defense mechanism. An attempt to protect my heart.

Then, at the very end of January, I thought I heard a familiar Cheep! at my door.

Through the beveled window, I saw a shadow moving in the wreath…

Could it be?

It was.

A male house finch.

He was there and gone.

I know he was scouting the nest site.

I’ve seen him a time or two since. He comes punctually between 4:44 and 4:54 in the evening.

Three weeks later, on February 20th, he brought his mate:

The female is in silhouette; the male’s head is facing the camera—his chest is extraordinarily red (looks like there’s three of him, but that’s just the beveled glass).

I suspect they’re having ongoing discussion about nesting in this wreath:

What do you think, honey? Prime location…

Hmmm. I don’t know. I definitely don’t like this glass. Too cool to the touch with way too much movement on the other side. I must have absolute privacy for incubating my eggs.

Right, right, right. Well, you know we don’t usually build here in the curve anyway. We build on top! Lots of privacy up there!

Weellll… it just feels a little too narrow. A little more space, a little more cover, that’d be nice...

This past Tuesday, March 5th, I saw a little bird tail busily moving at the upper right side of the wreath… same spot where last year’s ill-fated nest was built.

Yet no nesting material has been laid.

And so I wonder. Will they actually build here? They clearly want to. If so…when will it start in earnest? Will they decide this wreath just won’t do, after all? Is it not quite time yet? There’s nothing random about birds, their actions, or their inner clocks; their precision is astonishing.

Dare I, dare I even hope, that they are still in the planning phase? Maybe with a week or so to go, and that there will be eggs, possibly hatching at Easter?

Time will tell. I daren’t make predictions…I’ll just keep watching and waiting…

I should just take the wreath down and let them go. It would be easier.

Oh, but love isn’t easy, is it, little finches.

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Composed for Day 7 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers

Universe of possibility

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

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