constructed in Franna’s Spare Oom during Christmas
Never mind the season
for in the hands of the creator everything is made new
like the Halloween tree guarding the inner tent entrance
a cone adorned with black and orange ornaments has become a pillar of ember and ash cascading into firepetals (left over from a wedding) where chunks of stars (harvested from an old crib mobile) have come to rest
much like the creator herself savoring the fruits of her labors (having been aided by Franna and Big Sister, definitely magical)
now stretching out on her back little bare feet to the firepetals
cozy and content
clutching her baby while gazing up through the window at the wintersky
for, as any fantasy writer knows,
worldbuilding is hard work
not to mention most gratifying
The worldbuilder, age 3, resting in her fort with her doll “Jape” on her chest
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.
Beautiful Micah-girl: Your big sister has decided that the leggings of the fall outfit I got for your birthday are “bonfire red”… that is now officially my favorite color.
When you are six and visiting your Franna you always check the candy dish
today you would find miniature Reese’s Cups
and when you are tired of playing Connect Four
you and your Franna might build a tower out of the checkers in an ABABAB pattern
and you might fashion a tiny crown out of the gold Reese’s foil and turn the licked-clean ridged brown candy paper into hair that you place on top of the checker tower
The Tall Queen, you would say, just as she falls and splatters her checker parts across the table
The Tall Queen has fallen in battle! you would exclaim
(methinks that may be the influence of your reading Narnia books)
but at any rate, a Shorter Queen seems to do especially when you ask your Franna for eyes and a mouth and she gives you labels and pens so you can make them yourself
and in answer to your question: No, I do not think her crown looks too much like a Viking hat although surely the Vikings had queens, just saying
(to me she looks like she stepped right out of Wonderland)
but above all I think the whole moral of the story here is that everything which enters your realm when you are six has a purpose and is never wasted
For years now, I’ve caught glimpses of her when I’m driving down a certain road near my home. Between fields and old farmhouses are patches of woods, and that is where I see her.
I might confess that ever since I was a child, whenever I ride by an expanse of woods, I’ve daydreamed about seeing people amongst the trees as I go whipping past. Maybe people of long ago, making a reappearance on the land where they once lived and hunted. Maybe enchanted people, unable to go beyond some magical barrier, or simply relegated to this place of relative obscurity where they are least likely to be detected. In summer, the woods are full and dark; their secrets are more secret than ever, but in winter, the woods are revealing. So many trees are bare and shafts of sunlight illuminate the papery russet detritus of the forest floor…when I ride past in wintertime, I imagine someone stepping back in the shadows, or bending over a cookpot, or doing whatever it is one would do in a secluded woodland semi-existence.
So, actually seeing this maiden in the nearby woods for the first time gave me quite a turn. Now, of course, I know she’s there. I’ve been trying to figure out who or what she is. Perhaps a dryad (Narnia, anyone?), the shy female spirit of a tree, usually an oak in Greek mythology. Dryads look something like their trees and can live for centuries. Or maybe a hamadryad, a nymph so intimately bound to her tree that if the tree dies, she dies, too (anyone remember the scene in The Last Battle when the beechtree nymph runs to the Narnian king, Tirian, to say the talking trees are being felled, then falling and vanishing as her own tree is cut down?).
Although I could never get a good enough look at this maiden in the woods to decide if she might be a dryad or hamadryad, she didn’t seem “tree-ish” enough. No. For one thing, she wears clothes. A top as blue as the bluest untroubled sky, the kind with no clouds in sight, so blue it imparts an inexplicable ache in the heart. She has a long white skirt and some kind of white headdress. And she carries something red in her hands—berries? Grapes? What IS that, and what is she, and why is she standing out here in these woods?
One day, I kept telling myself, I’m gonna stop this car and get a picture…
And so I did.
Last week I pulled off the road and quickly got my shot… I dared not go too far or get too close, as I don’t know whose land this is and… well… you know… possible enchantments…
She appears to be a young Roman woman carrying a harvest of grapes home from a nonexistent vine. Not a goddess, not a dryad. I can’t discern why she’s here. A puzzle. No obvious reason that I can see. I wonder, too, if she was once pale marble or all bronze or solid gray cement—turned to stone, perhaps?—before some artist, whomever it was, chose to spruce her up with color. No telling how old she is, how long she’s been here, and why, why…so many untold stories…
I bet the trees know all about it. I would ask, if only I understood Tree. For they do speak to one another, you know. They have a whole communication network of their own, underground, in the air…
But I am merely human, and as always, the trees hold their mysteries close.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
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.
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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.
My son challenged me to make something with this roll of my metaphor dice: loss, elusive, junkyard.
This is what I have, so far…
Junkyard Loss is Not Elusive
It is said that imagination is the junkyard of the brain where used things lie in limbo until they are destroyed taken back by the grass or called into service again
which is to say no experience is wasted only catalogued and stored in the deep recesses of memory until the need for it should arise in solving a problem in creating a new thing in connecting patterns in different ways of seeing relating expressing understanding
which is to say that beloved childhood doll with the cracked face or the scent of your father’s shaving cream or that dog, that dog that chewed up your best shoes but slept every night by your side long ago, so long ago comes bounding back for a specific purpose
for there is unseen order in a junkyard where used things lie in limbo until they are called into service again or destroyed or taken back by the grass.
Every morning at about this time if I’m not yet out of bed a curious, pulsating light enters the room
I would like to think it’s a Muse, arriving from celestial regions bearing new and fragile ideas for the taking and keeping
or that it’s some other ethereal visitor out there beyond my window illuminating the darkness and if so, I want to know why
but no, it’s only a neighbor on his morning jog right on time, between four and five o’clock wearing a mining hat that casts a bright beam before him as he runs
I think, there’s a metaphor in that a meditation, a prayer before I rise to face the day in this present darkness: Let there be a light on my head a means of truly seeing all that I will encounter
not in the inadequacy of my own shadow, falling before me no, let it fall behind me indiscernible in the dark
and so I watch this soft light bobbing along my walls permeating my closed blinds painting pictures real and imagined in my mind while the Muse (who never really leaves) prods with a finger or maybe it’s more of a pulling or a whispering or all of these
and I sigh, throwing back the warm covers rising to write while it is yet night
a light to set the day off and running
Statue, “Quest for Knowledge,” Washington & Jefferson College, depicting a coal miner on lunch break. Photo by “Kathy,” CC-BY. My neighbor wears a hat akin to this on his predawn jogs.
—(nodding) Yes, and the crown. If I have them I will be SO fancy.
—(chuckling) Hmmm…I’ll see what I can do.
She adores being “fancy.” She’s adopted the word all on her own. I suspect Fancy Nancy books may have influenced this. Elsa in Frozen certainly has, hence the request for these particular ice-blue gloves and tiara—sorry, “crown,” my granddaughter declares. At four years of age, she can slink around the house like any haute couture fashion model, pausing with her face turned to one hiked little shoulder, eyes half-lidded…she can’t hold the pose for long, as the rest of us, her loyal subjects, dissolve with laughter.
—Oh my, you are so fancy, we tell her.
—Of course, she replies in her “fancy” voice, blinking slowly, before erupting in giggles and breaking her own spell.
The little package is waiting for her the next time she arrives.
No words for the magic on her face when she opens it, for the way she gingerly caresses the plastic pendant, as if it were the Hope Diamond. Within seconds she’s all decked out in her fancy finery. For the remainder of her visit, she walks with a regal air and won’t remove those gloves for anything except her breakfast of French toast.
I suspect she knows she’s the queen of our hearts.
One must be fancy even while helping to set up Christmas decorations.
In my humble opinion, the rest of the ensemble was necessary. ❤
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Inspired by SOS — Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog. This week’s prompt was “fancy,” with this quote from Donald Miller: “Everybody wants to be someone fancy. Even if they’re just shy.”If you write or want to write just for the magic of it, consider this your invitation to join us. #sosmagic
A friend sent me this photo after my recent pareidolia poem to a face in a cloud – pareidolia being the misperception of a stimulus as some familiar object, pattern, or meaning. It’s a normal phenomenon. The human brain’s visual system has a specialized mechanism for face recognition: the fusiform face area. We see, we interpret, we strive to make meaning, in more ways than we ever realize…
So: Do you see the wolf in this wood panel?
Imagine, then, seeing it in your house as a small child, every time you enter your bedroom…seems there could be a lesson here about our worst monsters existing only in our minds, but today the wolf has demanded a poem.
Far be it from me to argue…
Don’t really feel like playing Not sure I should be saying In case it hears me Because it skeers me That wolf beside my door. Don’t want to go to bed If a hundred times it’s said It’s waiting in the dark there To snarl and bite and bark there That wolf beside my door. What will it do as I go past? Even if I try it super fast? No one else knows why I sit in the floor and cry Except the wolf beside my door. Please, I want to say, Won’t you just go away? If you will let me rest I’ll do my very best Oh Wolf—give me my door! I hear his wild laughter Ringing ever after “Tell me, then, what for? You’re not a child any more,” Said the wolf who’s at my door.
With thanks to my friend for the photo and the idea, and to Two Writing Teachers for providing a word-playground for a Slice of Life to run and be free.
lit bits and pieces 