In Denver
Colorful street bulls
Denver’s Union Station trains
Mile High city sights
Denver 2026
Route 66: June 2023
Normally I’m reluctant to stay in old motels, preferring a good, clean Hampton Inn with doors that open into hallways instead of out directly into the world. But as we did our research about the things to do ( don’t miss Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, for example) and iconic places to stay along Route 66 when we drove from Chicago to Albuquerque in June of 2023, we learned that we’d be missing a big part of the Route 66 experience if we ruled out motels. So we stayed at the Wagon Wheel in Cuba, Missouri and the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, New Mexico as two of our “iconic motel” choices.
These motels have largely been “redone” over time to make improvements in plumbing and HVAC systems, but they have preserved the retro feel of the rooms, right down to issuing metal keys on triangular keyrings that have the room number on them. If you’re planning a trip down 66 anytime for the 100th Anniversary of The Mother Road, I highly recommend The Blue Swallow Motel. And if you’re into souvenirs, you can buy a keyring to take with you!
Stays and Sprays on 66
Blue Swallow Motel
Cadillac Ranch spray painting
Route 66 fun!
Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia
Our host for the third and final day of the July Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Glenda Funk of Idaho, who inspires us to write clerihews. A clerihew has four lines with an aabb rhyme scheme and focuses on a person. You can read more about this form and read the poems of others here. Like Glenda, I took liberty with the poem. I created mine about a group of people rather than just one person.
My People
community of writers
inspiration igniters
fine-tune words through a lens
as we breathe through our pens
In keeping with my travel theme for July, I’ve also unearthed a photo of our trip to Colonial Williamsburg from July 1976. Hard to believe that this was taken a half century ago, but here we are. We’ve come a long way, Baby……but I’m not sure whether we’ve moved forward or backward.
While Mom was taking this photo, my brother, Dad and I were posing on a cannon in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia in 1976, during the nation’s 200th birthday month. Like so many families nationwide, we visited our nation’s capital and Colonial Virginia during this iconic year in our nation’s history.
Cannonball
family cannon
snapshots, time-stamping our place
in this history
All of the Above: A Journey of Next Steps
Glenda Funk of Idaho is our host today at www.ethicalela.com for the second day of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write poems featuring our chosen meaning of the word wave after looking at all the definitions of the word. I chose the traditional hand wave. I’m about to give a big one.
Waving from the Wayfarer
everyone keeps asking me
what I’m going to do in retirement
when maybe the question
should be what I’m
not going to do……
because I’m choosing
Answer D: all of the above
I’m going to do it all
waving from the Wayfarer as I go
An American Sonnet: Knit One, Purl Two
Glenda Funk of Idaho is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the first day of the July Open Write. She inspires us to write Double Consciousness American Sonnets, which are looser forms of the traditional Shakespearean or Petrarchan Sonnet with the Volta, or shift, around line 8 or 9. Come visit the page today and read the poems of others, and perhaps write your own to share!
Instructions for Knitting a Poem
knit one, purl two, I hook words as I write
cool peace, with shades of panic-level fright
these variegated colors of yarn skein
like phases of moon cycles: wax and wane
crack of thunder harkens a derecho
aftermath: look up and see a rainbow
cast on, bind off ~ weave from all this SABLE
knit one, purl two, count along a cable
change skeins ~ dye lots show unstable jogging
tug trail legs: necessary frogging
sometimes we can’t undo what has been done
new leading legs knit common threads as one
a cozy mitten pair: rich mosaic
poetry can change the dull prosaic
Journey to Knowing
We’ve all heard it said that love is blind, and I’ve sure been a champion and a victim of that a time or two. But when it comes to our own family members and their relationships, it hits home in deeper ways. Someone I care about has recently broken off a year-and-a-half engagement. I’d had my suspicions about things when the wedding planning never got started and there was a wrinkle or two of bickering for a week or so another time, but I kept praying that things would work out as they should. And they did. The one who said, “I didn’t break it off sooner because I just kept hoping it would all work out” has experienced that rocky road of discovery where we must accept that even love that is blind can still see the truth when it has looked long enough.
Journey to Knowing Another Person
who we see is
who we choose to see
who we want to see
who we believe we see
…but are we ever really right?
Journey Through Reading
I feel deep gratitude for the seeds of my sprouting love of poetry from an early age. A Child’s Garden of Verses (received as Christmas gifts in both 1971 and 1972) by Robert Louis Stevenson and Childcraft Volume 1 Poems and Rhymes are the books of poetry that made me love poems so much that I hid in my closet with a flashlight to read them. I had a sleeping bag and pillow set up much like a tent or secret fort, and that was my poetry hideout. A cozy nook, away from the noise of the house and the cares of the world.
Here is a Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable pattern) using a selection of words from some of my favorite childhood poems.
Windy Verse
lion-like
usher of the month
windy roars
fiercest storms
step into this poetry~
it’s a real word storm!
Priorities….or Polarities?
Today, I am writing from a prompt in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. This card asks us to make a list of our priorities – – what pulls us in different directions, and what is our strength and our weakness. And thenI reread it….wait, no, the card says polarities. I first read it as priorities. Let’s give a rhyming hashtag poem a whirl today!
Polarities
#firstthisway
#thenthat
#theydon’tneedme
#…..untiltheydo
#pusheast
#pullwest
#nottheleast
#notthebest
#shove left
#shuffleright
#workallday
#dreamallnight
…..and turn off the alarm and keep dreaming
Embarking on Retirement: The Next Journey
Retirement
I’ve found the door
started looking last year
made my way through the room
straightening my files
smoothing my skirt
changing shoes
grabbing my hat and sunglasses
moving toward the portal
reaching, turning, pushing
toward the next chapter
Traveling the Journey
Looking in the Mirror
I look in the mirror
see the gray hair
see the neck wrinkles
see the crow’s feet
see the lazy thyroid laying down on the job
and thank God I’m here to show the wear
Common Threads 