Last Line of this year's Progressive Poem

The 2025 Progressive Poem

Ends Here!

Howdy, Campers, and welcome!

As Linda Baie wrote (exclamation marks and all): “Irene Latham began the Progressive Poem and hosted it from 2012-2019. Those archives of the poem can be found HERE! Margaret Simon took over
in 2020, and those archives are HERE!”

The rules: 1) The poem passes from blog to blog. 2) Each poet/blogger adds a line. 3) The poem is for children.

Here are some juicy quotes from Heidi Mordhorst’s March 29, 2018 interview with Irene Latham and Liz Steinglass about each Progressive Poem's team over the years:

Irene: People may come with some idea of where they would like to take it, but also an understanding that it may not go there at all.

Liz: And I think this exercise can be a reminder to let go, relinquish control, and see where things go.

Heidi: It’s a situation of “trust without danger,” isn’t it, and the reason I think that most of us (even though many of us who want to write tend to write by ourselves and it IS hard to give up ownership), can do it in this case because there’s really no stakes. It’s just for fun, it’s to play, and if things don’t go quite the way we expected, we just step back and say, “Oooh, that’s so interesting!”

Irene: I will tell you that some people take it very seriously, talk about how they couldn’t sleep the night before their line, and I think people really want to bring their best and that they really love the positive feedback. That’s a good thing in our community, being encouragers and cheerleaders of each other’s efforts, and you know you’re going to get that, but you also want to be the person who brings some really cool word to the poem, turns it in a new direction, but that’s why we’re here: to encourage each other! That’s why people invest in it, because they want that—being pushed by the community to bring their best to it.

........................................
Confession: I'm one of this year's participants who've lost sleep over it.

Can I say how much I love the line Linda Mitchell chose to start the poem? It makes me want to open my windows wide.

I began wondering...could I repeat Linda's first line as the last line? Would it work with the mystery line coming my way? If it does...our poem would be an envelope poem! (There are several definitions of envelope poems. Here's my post which includes a Writing Workout towards the end about envelope poems)

When Deborah Davis' evocative 29th line flew onto our poem, I began playing with the rhythm of her line. In trying to emulate her rhythm, I looked up the word April in different languages. The Finnish word sounded promising: huhtikuu (hooth-teek-koo) Until it didn't.

Instead, I found inspiration in Linda Baie's line (4th-from-the-end). And the rest is history.

........................................

And now, drum roll, please...

photo by Nguyen Tuan Hung from pixabay

Here, without further ado, is our CPP-2025 (Complete Progressive Poem of 2025):

SPRING WISHES FOR US ALL title by Linda Baie (slightly modified by my dog Sadie)

Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air
stippling every dogwood
dappling daffodils with flair

Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming Sweetgum

Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilac and phlox
commune without constraints

Breathe deeply the gifts of lilacs
rejoice in earth’s sweet offerings
feel renewed-give thanks at day’s end
remember long-ago springs

Bask in a royal spring meadow
romp like a golden-doodle pup!
startle the sleeping grasshoppers
delight in each flowering shrub…

Drinking in orange-blossom twilight
relax to the rhythm of stars dotting sky
as a passing Whip-poor-will gulps bugs
We follow a moonlit path that calls us

Grab your dripping brushes!
Our celestial canvas awaits
There we swirl, red, white, and blue
Behold what magic our montage creates!

Such marvelous palettes the earth bestows
When rain greens our hopes, watch them grow, watch them grow!

                                           ........................................
Regarding a title, I asked Margaret Simon, Irene Latham, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, Robyn Hood Black, Doraine Bennet, Jeannine Atkins, and Linda Baie: who titles our completed poem? Apparently, there is no rule.

So, Campers ~ Here's your assignment:
1) Read this terrific prompt about titling a poem, which Margaret pointed me to...
2) After you've been blown away by the example in that prompt...
3) I'd love to hear your suggestion for the title of this year's poem! ........................................
HERE'S THE COMMUNITY OF POETS WHO HATCHED THIS POEM:
April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at Dare to Care
April 6 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
April 7 Jone at Jone Rush Macculloch
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist at Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at {fiction instead of lies}
April 22 Patricia Franz at Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at Linda Kulp Trout
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: Michelle Kogan
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

It's time to dance, poets ~

here's a song for our celebration:
"The Last Line"

Thank you, Sadie, for hanging out with me
for hours while I sweated over this post.

(This is Sadie, watching her current favorite movie, FLOW,

made in Latvia, and winner of the 2025 Academy Award for Animation.

It's wonderous! Run, do not walk to see it)

PS: For me, April is whiplash month. I'm constantly turning around, wondering who just called my name--when they're simply making dinner reservations. Yes, my birthday is in April; I was named for the Ogden Nash poem, "Always Marry an April Girl". 

HOPE in a world OUT OF ORDER

🌹Howdy, Campers ~ and welcome to Poetry Friday! Today's poem and the link to PF is at the end of this post.

In this, our year-end round of posts, we will each share a favorite something we've read and would reccommend. It could be a book, a poem, a quotation, another blogger's post, anything that moved us, inspired us, thrilled us or taught us something.

So here's my truth: 

I am Jewish. 

I am terrified. 

In these frightening times, I want to give you...hope.

In yesterday's journal I wrote:

What I can’t figure out is how to hold the world in the palm of my hands. I used to be able to do that: listening to NPR each morning was a way of putting the world in order for the day. I don’t listen to it much these days. Can’t. It’s all bad stuff. I listen to My Unsung Hero and reposts of The Writers’ Almanac. I love the intro music of this podcast.

At first I was going to share Alison McGhee's October 21st poem of the week by Joseph Fasano. But that very human poem is too close to truth, too close to home, too dangerous, too deeply frightening. So I won't.

Through a dear friend, I came across  a letter in The Library of Congress by Helen Keller. 

image description (my words appear on torn paper):
As I read it, my heart remembered how to expand. It remembered that even in darkness there is great beauty. It remembered that humans can do miraculous things--like teach a blind and deaf child how to describe to another the sounds and sights of the 1898 World's Fair.

I hope reading her letter helps your heart remember, too.

(Below is a copy of the first page only of her typed letter; here's a link to all nine pages of the letter and a much easier-to-read transcript)

Dear Campers ~ I was planning to post yesterday's poem, titled OUT OF ORDER. When I read it this morning, though, it didn't seem hopeful enough to share with you. 

But the poem that found me today buoyed me. I hope it will lift you up, too.

Here's how today's poem walked in my door:

I took the following sentence from a newsletter and used it as a prompt:
“Ikaria is famously known as the place where people forget to die.”

Isn't that a wonderful quote?  Doesn't it make your fingers itch to DO something with it?

Here's how I started:

1) I typed the word FORGET as a temporary title.

2) I let my laptop keys out of their cages.

3) And off they galloped! 

Kitty, trying to catch the keys, galloping off...

Here's the rough draft:

NEVER FORGET

Forget that you’re in the nose bleed section.
Forget about the hotdog,
and that guy in the row below chomping on it.
Forget that salty, hot-doggy smell
which you’ll never get out of your brain

until...
Martinez hits a GRAND SLAM HOME RUN!
His bat smacks,
four runners score,
the ball soars,

to the kid in the red hat in a row far below
and a little to your right
who nearly catches it
but
drops it between the seats

and a nursing mother,
holding her infant securely against her chest with one hand,
kneels down and scoops it up,
deftly turns
and tosses it to the kid.

Forget the hotdog for god’s sake
it’s Martinez,
the kid,
the mother
that’s embedded in your memory.

Until today, that is,
forty-six years
to the day
when that salty, hot-doggy smell
wafts up

and a bat smacks,
four runners score,
the ball soars—then drops beneath your seat
and you, handing your beer to your buddy,
kneel down (oh, those creaky knees!)

scoop it up,
awkwardly standing and turning
to toss it to a random kid
in a red hat
whose face breaks out in an OHMYGOD! smile.

That, my friend--
that--
you will 

never
forget.

poem (c) 2023 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.
===========

After several rough drafts, I re-titled it NEVER FORGET, because beneath everything these days is that terrible drumbeat. 

And yet...look what I found in hot dog and a ball game: hope. Imagine that.

I'd love to read what you create with this same prompt: “Ikaria is famously known as the place where people forget to die.”

Thanks for reading all the way to The End.

And thank you, Buffy, for hosting Poetry Friday this week!

posted by April Halprin Wayland, 

who misses 14-year-old Eli,
her licky, lanky, incredibly sweet dog 
(Kitty is mourning the empty space her big brother left, too)

Eli as a puppy, 2011

Eli swore he didn't do it...

Thank you, Cindy Derby, for this watercolor of Eli,
which captures his personality perfectly

Glimmers and Starbursts and Hopeful Endings

 

You may remember my big summer news:  After a particularly nasty fall, I underwent surgery to replace a very sad hip.  I couldn’t take my walks. I couldn’t go into the woods or see my favorite trees or feed my favorite turtles.  The news was overwhelmingly depressing. I’ve watched every season of Doc Martin and The Witcher. And you know Whoooo!

And just about that time, a meme made its way to my page, defining the nature of glimmers. A glimmer is that micro-moment of happiness; a sign of hope.

So, I decided enough is enough. I pulled out an old story and made it new again.  Working at the desk, while doing my leg exercises, o! the possibilities!

A month later, I could bike ½ mile (albeit, it’s a PT bike. But a bike is a bike!)

I walked 45 minutes (albeit, I stopped to practice my balance, with my trusty cane – Miss Purple Bess – by my side.)

O, big glimmer. My eighth book, this one from Charlesbridge, is scheduled for Spring 2026! 

So how does this relate to our topic on endings? Ending is such a particularly good concept for me these days. I went to my Doc appt recently. I'm at the halfway mark. Only 6 more weeks of PT.  Endings. And new beginnings!

In other words, hope is the core ingredient for a satisfying ending to a story. There are many ways to end a story. There’s the happily ever after, common in romance stories and other fairy tales. There’s the “the restoration of honor through sacrifice; the bolstering of friendship and altruism through earned humility.” As Vaughn Roycroft noted in his article, Good Story Endings: Happy or Sad, or Something Else?” 

There’s the tragic ending, epitomized by Jack’s death in Titanic. And the open ending, when nothing is really resolved, and the murderer seems to have escaped. Then there's the redemption at the end of the story. In each scenario,  hope allows the character to move forward, and the possibilities are endless. After Jack died, Rose’s ‘heart lived on' to love again and have a family. Darth Vader found redemption and the rebellion found new hope.  

Hope means the story didn’t end with the tragedy, or even with the ecstasy. It is, in essence, the beginning to the next chapter – the sequel, if you will.

David Means, author of Two Nurses, Smoking, said, “A good ending doesn’t answer a question. It opens up the deeper mystery of the story itself.”

In other words, through dark moments and tragic scenes, and happy reunions, the most memorable ending invites readers to glean meaning from the story and, in so doing, becomes inspired, as noted by Hannah Gullickson in her article, “Imagination and Writing: The “Hopeful Ending” vs. the“Happy Ending”.  

And to end this reflection with a starburst: this morning I submitted the revision to my agent. 

“Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it's breathtakingly beautiful.” -- L.R. Knost

-- Bobbi Miller