18 May 2016
I spend most of my time with 18-25 year olds 🙂 I call them Angel Babies, Angel Chirren. 🙂 I call them My Teachers. Yep. They always teach me more than I could ever teach them.
Make art about something learned from a young person.
13 May 2016
Headed off to teach a weekend Promptathon workshop at The Porches Writing Retreat 🙂
Make art about porches.
14 May 2016
Saturday morning at The Porches Writing Retreat, and we’re working on Voices.
Make art about the voice you hear down in the hall.
15 May 2016
I have a habit of collecting discarded photographs in thrift stores, those precious memories sold in estate sales, so many beautiful faces, so many voices, so many stories.
Make art about other people’s pictures.
16 May 2016
Had some sweet winged company.
A luna moth emerges from its cocoon with not long for this earth. The average lifespan is a week, during which time they have no means to eat (no mouths). Their week (and life) goal is simple: to reproduce. To make love, the strongest of human emotions.
Many observers believe this to be a reminder of the importance of love in our short time on this earth. Live and love to the fullest and enjoy every experience that gets thrown your way.
Make art about Loving fully in the moment.
17 May 2016
Okay, so the garden’s cleaned up and turned over, but it’s pouring cold hard rain outside. So I guess I’m sewing, instead of planting today.
Make art about having your plans thwarted.
11 May 2016
I have a Creativity Promptathon Workshop Weekend coming up, and I always make small gifts for my participants. Nothing fancy, just something I made with my own hands. Small thank you for their trust and time.
Make art about a gift someone has given you. Or about giving a gift.
Happy National Poetry Month! One of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite truths 🙂 “A child’s wisdom is wisdom still.”~Jewish proverb
Make art about what children know.
Happy National Poetry Month! I got a little side-tracked by a visit with my beautiful daughter and her precious new son 🙂 So enjoy a cluster of prompts for catch-up! 🙂
4/16/2016
I’m over the moon in love 🙂 His name is Max and he is beyond magical 🙂 So’s his Mama 🙂
Grandchild
Maxine Kumin
All night the douanier in his sentry box
at the end of the lane where France begins plays fox
and hounds with little spurts of cars
that sniff to a stop at the barrier
and declare themselves. I stand at the window
watching the ancient boundaries that flow
between my daughter’s life and mine dissolve
like taffy pulled until it melts in half
without announcing any point of strain
and I am a young unsure mother again
stiffly clutching the twelve-limbed raw
creature that broke from between my legs, that stew
of bone and membrane loosely sewn up in
a fierce scared flailing other being.
We blink, two strangers in a foreign kitchen.
Now that you’ve drained your mother dry and will
not sleep, I take you in my arms, brimful
six days old, little feared-for mouse.
Last week when you were still a fish
in the interior, I dreamed you thus:
The douanier brought you curled up in his cap
buttoned and suited like him, authority’s prop
–a good Victorian child’s myth–
and in his other hand a large round cheese
ready to the point of runniness.
At least there, says the dream, no mysteries.
Toward dawn I open my daughter’s cupboard on
a choice of calming teas–infusions—
verbena, fennel, linden, camomile,
shift you on my shoulder and fill the kettle.
Age has conferred on me a certain grace.
You’re a package I can rock and ease
from wakefulness to sleep. This skill comes back
like learning how to swim. Comes warm and quick
as first milk in the breasts. I comfort you.
Body to body my monkey-wit soaks through.
Later, I wind the outside shutters up.
You sleep mouse-mild, topped with camomile.
Daylight slips past the douane. I rinse my cup.
My daughter troubles sleep a little while
longer. The just-milked cows across the way
come down their hillside single file
and the dream, the lefthand gift of ripened brie
recurs, smelly, natural, and good
wanting only to be brought true
in your own time: your childhood.
Make art about babies, the miraculous beginning of life.
_____________________________________________________
4/17/2016
One of my favorite things about traveling are the signs on the road 🙂 And one of my favorite poets ❤
Signs
1.
All night I dreamed of my home
of the roads that are so long
and straight they die in the middle—
among the spines of elderly weeds
on either side, among the dead cats,
the ants who are all eyes, the suitcase
thrown open, sprouting failures.
2.
And this evening in the garden
I find the winter
inside a snail shell, rigid and
cool, a little stubborn temple,
its one visitor gone.
3.
If there were messages or signs,
I might hear now a voice tell me
to walk forever, to ask
the mold for pardon, and one
by one I would hear out my sins,
hear they are not important—that I am
part of this rain
drumming its long fingers, and
of the roadside stone refusing
to blink, and of the coyote
nailed to the fence with its
long grin.
And when there are no messages
the dead lie still—
their hands crossed so strangely
like knives and forks after supper.
4.
I stay up late listening.
My feet tap the floor,
they begin a tiny dance
which will outlive me.
They turn away from this poem.
It is almost Spring.
Make art about seeing signs.
________________________________________________
4/18/2106
Today is my niece Jennifer’s birthday. I was fourteen when she was born, and I was absolutely certain that my sister Andrea had this miraculous fairy child just for my enjoyment. From scrambling through woods to the tune of Little Rabbit Foo Foo to watching her become a loving accomplished incredible woman, and one of the best mothers I’ve ever seen, that fairy child grown to woman has consistently been one of the greatest gifts of my life. No other poem would do 🙂 ❤
Phenomenal Woman
by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Make art about a phenomenal woman in your life.
Happy National Poetry Month! 🙂 Thinking a lot about my sweet daddy, so there must be Yeats. ❤
Make art about your wandering.
Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poem from a favorite poet 🙂 And a Prompt at the end!
Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poet, the amazing Amy Tudor. 🙂 ❤
What We Love
Amy Tudor
I walk my old dog down a street called Holiday,
past trees whose white bark is trimmed with silver
in the light rain of early Spring. The dog’s small heart
is failing and the vet’s said he shouldn’t be out,
but if we walk slowly he can go four or five squares
of sidewalk, then I let him stop and rest.
He puts his nose up into the cool air, the wind ruffling
his black and white coat and the gray on his ears,
the wind smoothing over him. When he can’t go
any further (halfway past that lovely ocre-colored house
in my neighborhood, the one that’s half-hidden by linden
and guarded by an iron gate), I carry him against my chest.
One day a black lab stood at a driveway gate
and barked at us as we passed. My old dog
looked from beneath half-lidded eyes and didn’t answer,
and finally the other dog’s owner, an older man,
came out the screen door and called the dog to come back.
The dog rose from where he sat, a hind leg dragging
and his right-front hitched as he moved toward the house.
I watched it go. The man looked at me holding
my old dog against my chest. The man smiled.
He raised a hand, half-greeting, half-regret.
I should say here that I know the rules I’m breaking.
I was told years ago that poets shouldn’t waste
their time on trivial things like dying pets.
“It’s been done, and done, and done to death,”
a friend once said. And it has, sure
as death’s been done and done and done to death.
So I’ll make a deal with you– forget
what I’ve said about my dog in my arms,
his nose in the air, the wind like hands. And forget
the man and his black lab that limped up
those brick back steps. I won’t write about any of that.
I’ll write a poem about what we love instead.
What we love is a night and a house
wreathed with linden, the dark kept outside
a circle of light over an iron gate. It’s fine
as silver paper or the wind of early Spring.
What we love is a tree that grows outside our window
as we grow inside its panes, a small good thing
we bring home – or that follows us there — one day.
Then it’s a friend that walks with us, gentle
and welcome as rain. It’s what we call to us to come
when darkness is coming, and it’s what tends us,
and what we tend. And finally it’s what we carry
close against us, feeling blessed as we hold it
and joy for what it gives and has given,
for the comfort it’s been through hard, heavy days,
forgiving every burden it’s been, grateful
for even the grief we must carry when it’s gone,
that soft, warm, impossible weight.
Make art about what you love.
Daily Prompt Catch-Up!
3/25/2016
My grandmother Miz Pearl always said to plant on Good Friday. I haven’t gotten the garden in yet, but I did put in some basil and some seed potatoes. Seeds of a new season.
Make art about seeds.
3/26/2016
Easter gathering with family, and my favorite part was watching my loving generous adult sons play with the baby cousins. Make art about love and gifts across the generations.
3/27/2016
Make art about your own resurrection.
Two Prompts ‘Cause I’m Sooooo Happy Spring’s Here!
Happy Spring Prompt 1
Dreamt last night I was playing with a little bitty baby bear We tussled and snuggled and giggled and romped. Make art about a baby’s capacity for joy. 🙂 Or about a bear. 🙂
Happy Spring Prompt 1
Make art with the first day of spring, about rebirth.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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