Poetry Friday Post – 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

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?

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.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brenna Dickinson (@brennadoodles)

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.

And in honor of the value of wabi-sabi in relationships, please listen to / read Alice Walker’s “I Will Keep Broken Things.”

Poetry Friday – Poetry Marathon Update

20/Jun/202420/Jun/2024 Denise Krebs19 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday and the one and only Tabatha Yeatts is hosting with a fun interview with William Blake. Thank you, Tabatha.

Last Saturday was the Poetry Marathon, and I made it! Twenty-four poems in 24 hours. All the poems are early drafts for sure. Some took five minutes or less and certainly show it, like one where I listened to YoYo Ma play while I wrote down some words, and another is a found poem from the lyrics of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”

I followed one of the two suggested prompts for each poem during the marathon. Hour 23, the prompt was to write a poem with the title, “Tender, Tender.” I was thinking of my grandson who will turn two this weekend.

Tender, Tender

My hope for you is to be
Tender, tender–strong
And tender. To be
all you are destined to be
All the good, for which you
were created can fill the
tender spots in you.
The strong and tender
spots, filled with you,
filled with love.
This is my dream for you.

Another poem I enjoyed writing was during Hour 24. (I don’t know if I liked the poem, or if I just liked that it was the last one.) The prompt was to write about wishes.

Hour 24

Wishes

My wish for all of us is to
see more sunrises.
(And each morning we see one,
we get to wish for more wishes.)
Today I am awake at dawn
because this is Poem 24–
24 hours in a day of poeming.
Would I have missed this layered sky?
Yes, this sky: where blue and
orange look so good together.
This sky was here so briefly
inviting us to drink it up.
It still would have come with
no witnesses at all. Any
other Sunday morning,
I would have missed it.
But this day, this poem
beholds the sunrise.
The birds are here too,
giving witness.
They just began their
Sunday morning
worship, rejoicing
together and alone.
My wish for you
(and for me) is to see
more sunrises–
together and alone.

The whole Poetry Marathon collection is here.

Poetry Friday – A Sacred Seven and Poetry Opps

13/Jun/202414/Jun/2024 Denise Krebs21 Comments

Whether you are a first-time visitor or a seasoned contributor to Poetry Friday, Welcome!

We are a community of poets, writers, teachers, librarians, students, mothers, fathers, grandparents, lovers of literature, friends. We live around the country and around the world. Some of us know one another in person; others are connected via technology.

Every Friday (and Thursdays for some!) we share poetry. Please join us! If you have poetry to share, you can add your blog link at the bottom of this post. Leave a comment and then enjoy the wealth and richness of poetry offered this week at each of the links included.

That was the beautiful introduction Patricia Franz wrote a few weeks ago. I liked it so much, I asked her if I could use it today since I’m hosting. She graciously said yes, so here we are. WELCOME!

This week I learned a new form: the sacred seven. (I wonder if the name may have been inspired by a line in “Brahma” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

A Sacred Seven Poem
by Denise Krebs
inspired by Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

My place in this world is given home and rest
as Mary Oliver declares my soft body in our
world, my body, myself, is safe here. No matter
that I may at times feel regret for the sad
consolation prize I won in being less than
on target in love and longing. Mighty hope
is found in this family of wild geese and me.

I learned about this form, called the sacred seven, in the Look Deeper Contest at the Florida State Poets Association that Jan shared last week. – In the sacred seven, “Starting at the left margin, take 7 lines from a poem you admire (not your own) and use the first letter in each line, in order, to begin each line in your poem about why you admire the other poem. Give credit to the other author.” I used the first letters of the last seven lines of “Wild Geese” to start each line of my poem. It’s funny how such a small constraint in a form (a prescribed beginning letter) can lead me places I would never have gone on my own: “regret for the sad / consolation prize” Hmmm…

Speaking of poetry contests, I looked up the California State Poetry Society contests and learned they have an annual and monthly contests. You do have two more weeks to submit a poem to the annual contest should you be interested. I wonder what contests are going on with poetry societies in your state/country?

This weekend I’m so busy with poetry and family times. The Poetry Marathon is on Saturday–Wish me luck! (Who’s joining me?)

The June OpenWrite begins on Saturday too. Do join us! Learn more here. There will be prompts and a writing community there to support you each day for the next five days. Margaret Simon will be hosting us on Sunday.

Finally, please leave your link in a comment below. I will round them up the old-fashioned way. Thanks!

Jama’s shares two Barbara Crooker poems and signing off for a summer blog break.

Karen Edmisten, in her powerful relationship poetry series, shares a lovely poem by January Gill O’Neil about being in the company of women.

Jane shares a very catchy and fun song that she and her child both learned in preschool. Have you heard it?

Marcie won an award! She is also spending the summer with Naomi Shihab Nye.

Tabatha shares an intriguing poem, “Death of an Irishwoman” by Michael Hartnett, as well as a sweet reminder that we don’t have to be good at things to do them.

Michelle has two poems, one is about flowers for fathers we hold dear and another about monarchs and their beloved milkweed. Complete with beautiful artwork.

Linda B. has some great stories about the fathers in her life, past and present. She’s such a good storyteller.

Kat got out her good camera, and she caught some magical small moments. She’s added sweet poems, just for us.

Sally and Matilda wrote a poem together. What a joyous time when one remembers to stop and listen. Be sure to watch Sally’s beautiful road trip video.

Amy had quite the experience this week, an experience she captured in a poem to remember. Also so many delicious third grade color poems!

Irene stepped back into early spring with a joyful quilt poem. And don’t miss this excellent reading list.

Matt has a wealth here, among them, a catalog of reading lists, a poem and song to encourage you to try something, and an opportunity for you to claim by the end of August if you want him to come for a classroom visit.

Patricia and time for dancing at the fourth wedding, preparation of the fifth wedding, and a new sugar maple seedling.

Jone snapped a gorgeous photo in a garden that takes me into our whole universe of connections.

Ramona shares a delightful children’s book full of all sorts of ways to start a poem.

Karen Eastland wrote a sweet limerick about her dastardly (though darling) garden visitors.

Carol L. had an early Father’s Day visit with her dad and a winner in a drawing for a copy of Picture Perfect Poetry, along with a sweet dragonfly haiku.

Carol V. has a lovely book review of Bless The Earth and a call to have Earth Day every day!

Poetry Friday – Musical Musings

06/Jun/202406/Jun/2024 Denise Krebs12 Comments

Today is Poetry Friday and Tracey is our delightful host who has cooked up a thought-provoking post about inspiration.

My husband is the best playlist creator, and we’ve had a winner for this road trip. Today, as he drove, I pondered some of the sweet tunes I was listening to. I was feeling contemplative about my children, the mistakes I’ve made along the way in this life, and my lifelong commitment to love and hope. I chose lines from two of the songs and wrote this double golden shovel about my thoughts.

I’ll not give up, for I’ll pray and
carry hope for us–Hope of sunny yellow.
You will continue to draw your lines
home whatever that is like, and
tonight may finally be when we all tire.
We will still make our tentative marks.
Are there enough remaining days of sun:
Young– and old-kissed?
So, to be true in our skin
let’s no longer hide ourselves and
set impossible ideals to handle
the pain and fears, the prison bars,
world-wide eternal collisions and
on and on and on where
fire once burned our resolve and I–
We came there and firmly stood.
Can there still be hope where fear was?
Burn the clouds to where
Brighter days will surprise us. More I
Than. More you than. Starting was
the culmination of longing, to
sun shining and all of us free to be.

Striking lines:
Lyric from “We Are Young” by Fun: “I’ll carry you home tonight. We are young, so let’s set the world on fire. We can burn brighter than the sun.”
Lyric from “Once Upon Another Time” by Sara Bareilles: “And yellow lines and tire marks, sun-kissed skin and handle bars, and where I stood was where I was to be.”

Now, if you’d like, please join me for a few moments on this musical road trip. The first song is by Sara Bareilles, “Once Upon Another Time.” I find it so hauntingly beautiful to listen to, and then to watch her sing it at the Kennedy Center, surrounded by all the gentle and mostly quiet musicians is mesmerizing.

The second song was “We are Young” by Fun. (Have you seen this fun scene from the movie Home Team? Harlan and his team mates sing “We are Young” to the girl he likes.)