poetry

The Girl Who Shouted No

Sally17 Comments

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

She was cute, although
Her favorite word was NO
She shouted it often and loudly
Her mother sat her down
And said, with quite a frown,
“Daughter, you do NOT do me proudly.

“I know this sounds absurd
But could you choose another word
One without such negative implication?
If you can’t do that for me
I’m afraid that you will be
Quite lonely when we leave you for vacation.”

“NO” formed on her lips
As she planted hands on hips
Then she looked to see her mother really meant it
So she took a deep breath in
(And grinned a little grin)
Saying, “I will do my best to prevent it.”

Such an eloquent little girl!
Complete with little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
She gave up shouting “NO”
And with sweet face quite aglow
She shouted words that were even more horrid

This is my submission for the W3 Challenge this week. Poet of the Week Violet (Congrats, Violet!) gave me the kind of challenge I love — a story poem. However, I did not follow all her guidelines. Here’s what she said:

Tell a story in verse—true or imagined, rooted in memory or invention. Let it unfold in a place you know well or one you’ve only dreamed of.

You can let the voice guiding the poem speak in a dialect—regional, ancestral, invented, or intimate. Let that voice shape the rhythm, grammar, and soul of the piece. Whether it’s Appalachian twang, Mandarin-inflected English, Nigerian Pidgin, or your grandmother’s Russian-accented Hebrew, the dialect is not a flourish—it is the storyteller.

While this use of dialect is optional, it’s highly recommended. Give us a poem that walks and talks in its own shoes.

I DID tell a story. However, I didn’t use a dialect. Trust me, this is good — my original attempt was to write a poem in Pig Latin.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

P is for Patriotism

Sally5 Comments

True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

My father was a man who was a champion of the Human Race. He dedicated his life caring for people.

I’m using my recuperation to sort through some of the stuff at my parents’ house. Today I came across a small collection of books that are Class Reunion Reports from Harvard Medical School. My father graduated from there in 1955.

In each reunion report, the class members submit updates on their careers and their personal lives. I’ve been leafing through each one to find what my father said.

In 1980, he said this:

We look back on the last 25 years with great satisfaction and pride in our family and their accomplishments, and with gratitude for having had an opportunity to be contributing members of our communities, for having the acquaintance of so many wonderful people, and for having witnessed such exciting change in our nation and our world. I still believe in the Red Sox, the United States of America, and the inherent goodness of our fellow man.

My father lived those words.

He died with the last Red Sox game of 2019 on the television in his bedroom. It was fitting.

He loved this country. He served in the US Army. Every year he would faithfully watch our local Memorial Day parade down Main Street, and stand at attention for the 21-gun salute. It was a huge honor when he was asked to Marshall the local 4th of July parade. He proudly walked (no convertible for him!) the whole parade route in his dress uniform.

And, he truly believed in the inherent goodness of our fellow man — although our current president gave my father a challenge there.

One of my funniest Emergency Room moments with my father was in 2017 or 2018. The staff was trying to assess his cognitive status by asking the usual questions:

  • Do you know where you are? (“Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, NY”)
  • Do you know what day of the week it is? (I can’t remember whether his response was correct or not. That’s not really a fair question for older people who have less of schedule to mark their days.)
  • Do you know who the president of the United States is? (“I refuse to say that awful man’s name.”)

I think that makes him a patriot and a champion of the Human Race.

And cognitively aware.


fiction

The Drink Museum

Sally6 Comments

The series of signs:

[IT’S MUCH BETTER]

[THAN YOU THINK]

[DO NOT MISS]

[THE DRINK museum]

“What’s that about?” Johnny asked his mother. They were driving on a small highway in Kansas to visit his uncle.

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “Uncle Fred never mentioned it.”

[WINK*WINK*WINK]

[YOU’RE ON THE BRINK]

[of THE DRINK museum]

The signs were brightly colored, pink-orange-green, obnoxious.

[WHATEVER YOU DO]

[DON’T BLINK!]

[YOU MIGHT MISS]

[THE DRINK museum]

“We have to stop,” Johnny said. “It’s probably cool.”

Mom sighed and pulled over.

Signs guided them to a sketchy-looking parking lot outside a fenced-in enclosure. A ticket booth, painted those same loud colors, stood in the middle of the wooden wall facing them.

“You might be s’prised,” the toothless old ticket-taker said, pointing to path they were to follow.

[MILK]

First, they came to plywood cow with teats that could be squeezed. Johnny went to try.

“Don’t touch it!” Mom shrieked. “Germs,” she explained.

The cow was followed by a goat, sheep, yak, camel, horse, and moose.

“Do people really drink moose milk, Mom?”

She shrugged.

[VEGETABLES and FRUITS]

The path led them past a large plywood carrot, beet, pumpkin, cucumber, tomato, oranges, grapefruit, apples (and an old apple press), and grapes (and a vat for stomping to make wine).

[OTHER]

The hops were labeled.

Corn, barley, and rye followed.

“Corn juice?” asked Johnny, but Mom saw the still around the bend.

[FREE SAMPLES]

“Goody!” said Johnny. “I want to try them all!”

This is my (weak) contribution to this week’s Unicorn Challenge. Still working on getting my mojo back.

The rules for the challenge are easy — no more than 250 words and use the photo for a prompt.

poetry

Hip Surgery

Sally10 Comments

“Here’s the things that you should do.
Doing them is up to you.
Don’t do too much or too little.
It’s all spelled out — jot and tittle.
I’ve done my job. Now you do yours.
You’ll find there are no magic cures.
Good luck. Work hard. I’ll see you soon,”
With that, the surgeon left the room.
Empowerment.

This week’s W3 prompt comes on the heels of my total hip replacement. Here’s what POW Dennis Johnstone challenged us to do. He called it “Let the noun wait.”

This week’s prompt invites you to write toward something, rather than starting from it. You’ll be building pressure, rhythm, and meaning without naming your subject until the final line.

Step 1: Choose an abstract noun

Pick a single abstract noun that carries weight, mystery, or tension for you—something like liberty, danger, truth, love, exile, justice, forgiveness, joy, grief, silence…

Don’t use it until your poem’s final line.

Step 2: Delay the subject

Start each line with a description or action that leads us toward the noun, not from it. This is called left-branching syntax—it means delaying the main subject or verb.

You’re working with delay, accumulation, and unfolding. The noun you’ve chosen arrives only at the end. Until then, build around it, toward it, beneath it. Let readers feel its shape before they hear its name.

family · Life

Chrysalizing

Sally4 Comments

“Most highly creative people can remember ‘a moment, an encounter, a book that they read, a performance they attended, that spoke to them and led them to say, “This is the real me, this is what I would like to do, to devote my life to…”‘ says psychologist Howard Gardner.

That moment of memorable, dramatic contact with an activity of fascination is known as a ‘crystallizing experience.'”

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, Wired to Create

Nothing crystallized for me
Instead, I chrysalized
Crawling into a pupating state
Of home
And children
And family

While my peers were
Making their mark
On the world
Through education
And career
And the upward mobility
Of recognition,
I was making soup
On the woodstove
And washing yet another load
Of laundry.

I folded shirts
Matched socks
Baked cookies
And bemoaned my untidy house

I read books
Upon books
Upon books
Aloud to my children

One by one
They left home
For higher education

One by one
(all eight of them)
Graduated
Found jobs
In their desired field(s)
Emerging from their chrysalides
To live adult lives

Meanwhile I
Am sorting
Through boxes of papers
They had written:
Poetry
Stories
Notes
Academic research

And I cry
Not for sadness
But for joy

They are beautiful people

Now it’s my turn
To crawl out from this protective shell

What will I be?

A to Z Blogging Challenge

O is for Old Age

Sally5 Comments

… if your spirit is still more or less intact, one of the benefits of being an old crock is that you can enjoy again something of what it’s like being a young squirt. …if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time around is that you don’t have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time round is that you don’t have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

My mother had dementia. Her filters fell away. She said things that I never imagined her saying. Once we were in a church to watch a concert. The woman who sat in the pew ahead of us was morbidly obese. My mother leaned toward me, but spoke in a loud voice, “That woman is FAT! Fat, fat, fat!” I cringed. Filters help us be kind. Not every thought we think needs to be said.

But there is a also a confidence that comes with age, as Buechner describes.

Young squirts and old crocks have so much in common. Intersecting arcing lines on a giant graph of life.

My body is feeling its age these days. I’m scheduled for a total hip replacement this coming week. In the meantime I traveled to Virginia for my middle daughter’s college graduation. Because of my hip, I rode with my oldest daughter’s family instead of doing the 8-hour drive myself.

My one-year old granddaughter is just starting to walk. Her favorite way right now is holding onto her mom’s index fingers for confidence. Sometimes she can be coaxed to let go and take a few toddling steps before she drops down to crawl or turns her head to look for her mom.

I, on the other hand, struggle with my first steps getting out of the car. It’s such a simple thing to do that I have taken for granted all these years. Now I pivot on my butt to get my legs out the car door and slide forward to stand the way the physical therapist instructed me. After two hours of sitting though, my hip protests. The pain is sharp and intense. I press my lips together and grit my teeth to stand and walk.

My daughter asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I reply tersely and mush on. In some ways I feel like the surgery can’t come soon enough.

My granddaughter and I are both learning to walk.

After the Baccalaureate service yesterday, the college president had all the graduating students stand on the grass of the quad lining the sidewalk. After saying a few words of encouragement to these young people embarking on a new journey, she had them all step onto the sidewalk, symbolic of moving on to whatever comes next.

Another first step. Exciting, fresh, new, a little scary.

That’s how I feel about this hip surgery. I won’t even stay overnight in the hospital. They’ll get me up and have me walk that same day. Exciting, fresh, new, a lot scary.

Life · Writing

Decision Making

Sally8 Comments

My youngest daughter is faced with a challenging decision. She and her current roommate are moving into a new apartment. It’s two bedroom, two bath, but one of the bedrooms has a bath attached while the other bedroom would use the common bathroom.

“The one with the private bath is clearly the better one,” she told me. “How do we choose who gets it?”

Draw straws? Flip a coin?

One of her sisters suggested they each bid on the room. How much more would they be willing to pay for the room with the private bath? Later, though, she said that would kill their friendship. Both girls would feel resentful — one for the privacy, the other for the money.

I asked dilemma-daughter again the other day. “Did you figure it out?”

“No,” she said sadly. “This is so hard!”

And yet I think we both know that if this is the hardest decision she has to make in her life, her life will have been pretty easy.

It’s less about making the right decision, and more about being able to sit with whatever decision is made. She will have another hard decision next week, next month, next year. Another opportunity to move on and not second-guess.

I think that’s called living.

This is my post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where the prompt was “Straw.”

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in this weekly prompt, but I’m trying to get those creative juices flowing again.

fiction · Writing

Skeecher

Sally12 Comments

“Mom! I can’t find Skeecher!” Jeremy yelled.

Mom turned from the sink. This was the third time this week that Skeecher, a strange statue that Jeremy had unearthed in the garden, had gone missing.

Last week when she had sent Jeremy out to pick rocks from the newly-tilled soil of the garden, he moaned about the work like any normal 10-year-old. But when he came running in holding this dirt-covered statue of pot-bellied humanoid, he was anything but annoyed. He was delighted. Why Jeremy named it Skeecher was as much a mystery as the thing’s origins.

“Did you look on your dresser?” It sounded like an obvious place, but that’s where Skeecher was yesterday when they went to look.

“No! I looked there. AND the window sill. AND the closet,” Jeremy said, listing off Skeeter’s previous hiding places.

“I’ll help you find him” she said, drying her hands and heading down the hall. She opened the door to Jeremy’s room, and there was Skeecher standing in the middle of the floor.

“Is this a joke?” she asked.

Jeremy didn’t say anthing. He just scooped up the figure and hugged it.

The next day, while Jeremy was at his friend’s house, Mom heard noises in Jeremy’s room as she passed. She opened the door to see 6-foot tall Skeecher leap onto the desk and shrink to his normal size.

She ran in and grabbed the statue. His body still felt supple. His eyes blinked open and met hers.

This is my contribution to the Unicorn Challenge. It’s a challenge with only two rules: 1) no more than 250 words, and 2) inspired by the photo.

I know, I know — I’ve been MIA, but the creative tank has been low. Life.

And I realize this is an incomplete story. Again – life.

Don’t you think life is just one big incomplete story?

Faith · family · poetry

Grammie

Sally12 Comments

My grandmother was a worrier
(Or, some would say, a prayer warrior)
She fretted all the time
(probably from womb to Easter tomb)
Her immigrant family worked hard
At menial jobs for which they were hired.
They moved up the social ladder.
Education, honesty, and faith would lead her
To a comfortable American life.
You would think she turned over a new leaf!
But she worried and worried and worried,
Though her faith in God never wearied

This is my submission for the W3 challenge this week — brought by the host with the most, David himself.

Here’s the challenge: Write a poem using pararhyme throughout—where consonant sounds match but the vowels shift (e.g., fill / fell, stone / stain). Let this half-matching quality reflect a theme of incompleteness, near-misses, or strained connection.

Can I say that it’s not even a near miss to be a worrier and a person of faith?! The two stand in stark contradiction to each other, and yet, that was my grandmother.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

N is for News

Sally12 Comments

We’re all of us caught up in our own small wars, both hot and cold. We have our crimes and passions, our failures and successes. …

Maybe there’s nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

The W3 prompt this week is to write Waltz Wave, which is a single, unrhymed stanza of 19 lines with the following syllable count: 1–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–3–4–3–2–1–2–3–2–1–2–1. The poem’s theme should be “Strength and Vulnerability.” (Thanks, Suzanne!)

This probably doesn’t totally match the theme, but it sprang from watching/reading/listening to the news, so I’m putting it here with the Buechner quote, and giving it the title of “News”

A
Power-
ful
Person
Blusters on
Without
A
Shred of
Awareness
How his actions
Impact the
Country.
I’d
Rather
Read about
Leaders
Who
Really
Care