2024 – Dare to Care

Poetry Friday – Classified Haiku and July Open Write

25/Jul/202426/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs4 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday. Marcie Flinchum Atkins is hosting today at her blog. Fun fact: I just got Marcie’s poem swap in today’s mail! So fun! Thanks, Marcie.

I created a small classified creation with the Poetry Sisters today. Thanks, Sisters. Read more about it here.

Needed:
Dystopia removal, for
Hope’s on the horizon

Contagious laughter
Joyful, honest, free to be
We’re not going back

It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? (Recently I saw on Instagram, “July has been the longest year.”)

A couple of the Open Write poems I wrote this week reflected the news.

Saturday, July 20, Septercet with Denise Krebs

Pink sky dawn, chirping begins
Reptiles warm, newly alive
emerge from their winter cold

Hope in this new day will stay
fragile family bowknot–
ties up love like rose-tinged clouds

Queue up the next crescendo
dulcet and devout playing
on this blooming day in May

Life is a bouquet of kin
to fragrance and keep the soul

Sunday, July 21, They Paved Paradise with Jennifer Guyor Jowett

We Depend on Hope

Tiny, critically endangered Hope
has reached a 25-year high. This
number marks the highest spring
count for Hope in more than two
decades. Above-water surveys
carefully monitor Hope’s population.

Though Hope has fluctuated
dangerously in the past,
Hope is a marvel of adaptation.
Hope has evolved to withstand
the harsh conditions of its
desert habitat. Hope has a
unique metabolic rate
that allows Hope to survive
on minimal food resources. Hope
primarily feeds on the algae
that grow on the shallow rock shelf.

Despite recent success,
Hope remains threatened
by climate change impacts
on the delicate desert ecosystem.
Imperiling Hope further
is the growing human
demand for water. Hope
is an indicator of the health
of the larger ecosystem.

By protecting Hope,
we protect the
entire web of life
that depends on Hope.

I replaced the word pupfish for Hope in this poem, per Mo’s fun prompt. The facts started out to be about the Mojave Desert Devil’s Hole Pupfish; all the other words in my poem were found in the linked article. I wrote this poem on Sunday morning, after first deciding I wanted to use the word Hope and an endangered desert animal. I considered deleting that first fact, though; it just seemed a silly claim that Hope was at a 25-year high. However, that is the nature of Hope–we rejoice in Hope even when there isn’t anything to be hopeful about. By Sunday afternoon, President Biden had decided not to run for reelection, and V.P. Harris was making waves already. Over a hundred million dollars collected in a day and a half. Hope is climbing higher already!

Monday, July 22, X Marks the Spot with Mo Daley

Dear Dr. B,

Each moment
we were wondering,
what’s at stake?

We realize the
President exiting
is remarkably
brave and selfless
of him.

And you, did you know
when you posed for Vogue?
Was the possibility on your mind?
Or did it later become yours?

Thank you, Dr. Jill, for your
total commitment
to community.
You are a unique treasure.

With care,
We the people

———————————————————–
From an X drawn on page 65 of Vogue magazine, August 2024, in the article “Of the People, For the People” about Dr. Jill Biden, By Maya Singer. Words found on the X are in italics in the poem.

Tuesday, July 23, The Important Thing with Gayle Sands

The important thing
about a poem is
that it is healing.
A poem can lift
its voice and shout
for you to do that thing
or it can whisper life into you
in the fourth watch of the night.
A poem comes from
many places—your pen and
that scrap of paper
in your pocket
or from far-flung galaxies.
But the important thing
about a poem is
that it is healing.

Wednesday, July 24, Dodoitsu with Mo Daley

Company came for dinner–
Limeade, green salad, pesto
pasta, broccoli. Surprise
St. Patrick’s green meal

NCTE Thoughts

23/Jul/202423/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs5 Comments

On Friday, I received an email from NCTE with the session information for “Words That Mend: Finding Heart, Hope, and Humanity within the Healing Power of Poetry.” This session will be on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. in room 210A. There are ten of us who created the proposal; five to seven of us will be able to go to Boston to lead the session. Writing poetry with teachers, many who are tired and overwhelmed by the stress and busyness of life and work, is empowering and healing for all. Being in Boston will be a dream fulfilled. I’ve never been, so I look forward to The Children’s Museum and, as a former eighth grade American history teacher, I have to see some of the historical sites before I leave Boston.

Last year, I got to attend NCTE in Columbus. It was a time to spend real time with colleagues and friends from around the country. To learn, laugh, plan, and play with these old friends (and new ones, too). To network with others about work I’m doing in my community. To be surprised by joy like with Tom Hanks’ fun speech where he typed a message on his collectible typewriter he donated to NCTE. To learn and reflect on the learning, often by writing poetry.

Do you ever write poetry in response to learning and life experiences, both painful and joyful? I have been doing this for the last few years. I find it both healing and empowering. Here’s a poem I wrote after meeting a new friend at the last NCTE.

Kaleidoscopic Encounter

I met someone yesterday.
We engaged in
conversation
standing in the exhibit hall.
She’s come here from a
South American country
Where she fled to the U.S.
as a refugee.
Her grandfather came there as
A refugee fleeing the Holocaust.
Her name came together,
a perfectly delightful mix of
Spanish, Arabic, and Jewish.
She is a kaleidoscope of
color and light and generosity,
And I am better for having met her.

I’ve come here from
a white-washed history,
a white-washed lineage,
and so much loss of
color and light and generosity.
I’ve come from who knows where,
Except the generic ‘Wales,’
as a child, it was all I was given
when I asked, evidence enough
that we were in the right pot,
melting into America.
I came from who knows when–
not in this century,
or the last,
maybe the one before.

We are all losers
in the myth of white supremacy.
We are not a melting pot,
We are a kaleidoscope.
We will all win, when
We all belong.

Do you too write poetry to help you process and heal? With students? Or in community? Would you like to share a little slice of your writing poetry life in a book we are writing? Submit your story here on this Google form by 8 am August 3, 2024. The book Words That Mend will be available in September free in a PDF with a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Friday “The First Tree I Loved”

18/Jul/202419/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs9 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday. Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche is hosting, where she shares gratitude for her beautiful summer.

Glenda Funk is one of my poetic inspirations for keeping up with the Stafford Challenge, where we write one poem a day for a year. She always publishes hers on photos and posts them weekly on her blog. One of her poems last week was “Old Trees.” She explained she wrote it in response to the ageism around President Biden. Every time I read her poem, I appreciate it more. (The photo is one she took at Muir Woods.)

Old Trees
By Glenda Funk

The first tree I loved
rose skyward in our
yard. Its thick oak canopy
provided shade on sticky
show me state summer days.
I didn’t know then trees
need company, other trees to
reach their viney roots to,
clasp rhizome to rhizome
in an arboreal family. Years
later I planted three crimson
spiraling oaks in our yar &
watched them grow from
saplings into adult trees. I
grieved when one died,
leaving only a dwarfed
stump, a reminder of its
past. Since European
settlers arrived on this
continent white men have
killed 90% of virgin forests.
I mourn the trees’ death–
Standing among the trees
I am simultaneously small &
significant, able to climb
only the old trees’ branches,
the young being too weak to
hold the essence of who
I am.

(Shared with permission from Glenda.)

Glenda’s poem made me look back at the first tree I loved, so I was inspired to write this poem using her first line.

Trees

By Denise Krebs

The first tree I loved
had limbs like an old friend–
sturdy and true,
shaped just right to
hold all of me.

She was there when
I needed a getaway,
a special reading spot,
a comfy hideaway.

She was a fruitless mulberry,
barren of the lip-
and foot-staining berries
I would have missed terribly
had I known about mulberries then.

She held tightly to the sharp branch
that cut my brother’s eyelid
as he fell out of the tree–this family
tale would give sober support
to all later warnings: “Be careful
or you’ll poke your eye out!”

Sixty years after I first fell for her,
there have been many more tree loves–
the storybook eucalyptus grove
I ran to play in at every recess,
the delicious tree where Keith and I
sat in the midst of his avocado ranch,
the mysterious and ancient ginkgo–
Father’s Day photo background,
the sweetest delicate frangipani
in a Bahrain neighbor’s garden hideaway,
the patient and tenacious Joshua tree
that watches over our dining room table.
Now, my first tree love has gone
to meet her Maker, but my love lives on.

Thanks to Margaret for sharing this apropos prompt from Write Out–it includes Ida Limón, Mary Oliver, trees and a chance to be part of a brainstorming session to prepare for October’s Write Out in your context.

Tomorrow, Saturday, July 20, I’ll be hosting at Ethical ELA. Will you come and write a septercet with us?

You and I

16/Jul/202416/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs9 Comments

Last week our desert was over 110 degrees each day. That’s more than 15 degrees hotter than the average temperature for July. We have the privilege to be able to get out of the heat, and we did it. We went to the coast, where June gloom continues later into the summer than usual. I am humbly reminded, though, of the people who don’t have the chance to get away from the heat, cold, storms, floods, and additional climate catastrophe around the world. What more can I do about it? I am voting with environmental responsibility and reducing my carbon footprint. I’m trying, but it was a nice relief to get away. More ideas to help the environment from the U.N. here.

We got to have dinner with my nephew who we hadn’t seen in ten years.

I read a poem today by Jonathan Potter, shared recently by Karen Edmiston on her blog. Potter’s “You and I” poem inspired my own “You and I” about my husband, who I am so blessed to live life with.

You and I
After Jonathan Potter

You are a flag of safety,
my languishing laughter
alive again in your insight,
calendar of conscience and truth,
host of joy and gladness,
a latte of love,
sushi in the park,
poetry in action,
a quiet sunset full of hope.

And I am the discoverer of you.

What do you do about the “I Don’t Knows”?

09/Jul/202412/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs19 Comments

A couple weeks ago I shared Alice Walker’s poem “I Will Keep Broken Things” with my wabi-sabi poem for Poetry Friday. If you haven’t heard Alice Walker read her poem, I hope you will take time to listen to it today. Or listen again. I find it so comforting.

In one of the essays in Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott talks about doors and the power of hinges: “A hinge both fixes something in place and helps it open. It’s ingenious.” Later in the chapter, she describes the suffering of her son’s addiction, the healing of self-love, and the serendipity of falling in love. “I don’t know how that happened…” she writes. Then she quotes her husband saying, “‘I don’t know’ is a portal. ‘I don’t know’ is also a hinge.” Such a lovely healthy view of “I don’t know.” There are many things we don’t know these days. Sometimes the not knowing feels overwhelming. Today I will choose to embrace the I don’t knows–each a portal and hinge to our spiritual and mental health.

I Don’t Know

I will keep the
uncertainty,
the unknowing,
for all of Life is
unsure–
full of either love
or suffering.
Both are proof
we are living;
so, I will keep
it all, learn
during the
suffering,
and wait.
When I am
confounded,
I will rejoice
amid the
I don’t knows
because
tiny miracles
abound
in all of it–
like the lily
and sparrow
know without
worrying,
even in
the nameless,
the uncharted,
the strange.
These all add up
to an unabridged life.
I will keep it all–
the life,
the love,
the suffering:
the Love.

_________________________________________________________

Since I’m on the road this week, this post will be for TwoWritingTeacher’s Slice of Life, Spiritual Journey Thursday, and Poetry Friday posts. Thursday’s host is Ruth Hersey at there is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Friday’s host is Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge

Poetry Friday – We Need More Poetry

04/Jul/202404/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs7 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday and Jan at Bookseedstudio is hosting with a delicious slice of watermelon for you.

This has been a tough week in America, and here we are celebrating 248 years of this experiment in democracy. This morning I read an appropriate poem for this age, which I believe testifies to why we need more and more poetry. It’s simply called “Poetry,” from Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by William Stafford, page 33.

Wholeness

I find myself dismayed in these grave times–
can’t imagine how history books will record them. They
eat away at our resolve to bring the wholeness
that this universe graciously casts. Resist. Let Wholeness be the
bread of our existence and our hope for tomorrow.

A golden shovel with William Stafford’s last line: “I can’t eat that bread.”

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Slice of Life – Sweltering Day Activities

02/Jul/202402/Jul/2024 Denise Krebs9 Comments

Often, my husband doom scrolls the weather report on his phone. He says aloud many of the highs and lows for the next ten days. Over a hundred. Down to 80. Up to 110 on the weekend. Then he moves on to Minneapolis, Seattle, Murrieta, where family live, to see what they will be facing. In the meantime, we sit in our cooled abode, an island of relief in the desert. We’ve not been taking bike rides or hikes as often as exercising indoors.

Yesterday, in rebellion against the stifling heat and so I could sit in front of the mini split, I took on a job that hadn’t been done in full since I got my Google Gmail account in 2010. I pulled that Gmail Inbox under my control. First, I deleted old emails 50 at a time for several hours. It took so long because I would peruse the string of 50 first. If there was something interesting, from a friend or family member, I would check it out. Sometimes I’d smile and reminisce and sometimes I’d move them into a Special Emails folder. When I got up to the more recent emails, I filed more away in various folders to follow up on or save resources that I will still need.

In the last few weeks, I knew this job was coming, so I have been deleting a lot of daily junk mails and unsubscribing to those accounts I’ve never even opened. ~~Next on the list is to venture into my Sent email folder.~~ Never mind, I just went in there and finished that job. I realized I had accidentally been in there yesterday so there weren’t 10,000 sent messages. Sometimes yesterday I would find myself in another of the many folders–Sent, Updates, Social, Forums, etc.–madly deleting. I learned a lot about Google Gmail yesterday. Today I feel proud and at least 5 GB lighter.

Maybe next on my list will be to venture into Google Drive. (That will be another beat-the-heat job that may take multiple days!)

Poetry Friday – Our Wabi-Sabi Home

27/Jun/202428/Jun/2024 Denise Krebs9 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday and Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting today with an interesting poetry form and some valuable wabi-sabi questions.

At the June Guest Poet presentation for the Stafford Challenge, I heard Jessica Jacobs read her poem “Primer.”

PRIMER

A Florida child knows the safest part

of a lake is the middle. That gators

and moccasins shade in the lilies, hunker

at the shoreline in the muck right past

the trucked-in sand. Knows a baby snake

means a mother’s nearby, angry.

That to kill her, you must bring a shovel

down just behind her skull—leave

too much tail and the headed half will

keep coming at you. To run zigzag if a gator…

read the rest here on Rattle

Thank you, Poetry Sisters, for the invitation to join you in this month’s wabi-sabi poetry writing. Jessica’s form loosely inspired my wabi-sabi poem today. As I learned about wabi-sabi, it kept reminding me of the place I call home, a home we have gradually and frugally made into a place we love (in no small part, thanks to my talented sister who lives next door).

Wabi-Sabi

Our home knows the hands of the Martin brothers who skillfully built her seventy years ago. Knows the power of quiet living, even when the wind is so strong she thinks she’ll blow away. Knows the heavy work of being moved from her first foundation a hundred yards across the desert. Knows how it feels to grow to the north, west, and south with room additions to make her a home. Knows the most-of-the-year-snow-capped San Gorgonio will be there long after she’s gone. Knows the 40-year-old tiled living room floor is as sturdy as it needs to be. Knows the cottontails, the jackrabbits, and the coyotes of home. Knows each of the hundreds of generations of quail that have skittered and scattered, communicated, and raised ever more babies around her place. Knows, inside and out, the wooden cabinets that the brothers built. Knows how we lovingly extended the kitchen by building more cabinets from the wood the brothers left in the shed.

Knows imperfection.
Knows impermanence.
Knows incompleteness.

Our home has new tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms puzzled together with tiles respectfully gathered from here and there. Has sweet basil hanging in the front, enough for us and the occasional critters who nibble it. Has yard sale treasures to make her comfortable. Has a counter made from a dying Jeffrey pine tree, with bark beetle history prominently displayed through its lifelines, now suspended in time. Has a bar that serves up smiling sunshine from the skylight overhead, bandage on an archaic evaporative cooler wound. Has chipping paint, cracks, and weathered boards. Our home has had poems written in her honor.

Our home has imperfection.
Our home has impermanence.
Our home has incompleteness.