Write about Bad Choices

Use a metaphor from sports, music, or nature to show how to move beyond a bad choice or an unfortunate result.  You could begin with - When you throw an interception, don't cry. Go tackle the guy. 


After choosing the metaphor and fleshing it out with details, keep pursuing images and write about what happens next. 

Listening Skills

Alice Parker once said, "To be certain that someone will listen you must sing softly with intensity."

Sometimes the only way to find our voice is to remain silent and listen to the voices of others. If we listen, really listen, messages and meanings begin to make sense.


Learning listening skills requires patience and silence. Avoid using your voice to fill empty spaces in conversation.

Sit in a friendly chair. Focus on your breath as it moves in and out. Listen to sounds with full awareness.

At first, you will classify sounds as an airplane, car passing, or bird's chirp. Listen beyond the harshness of garbage trucks and jack hammers. Defining the sound removes you from it. If you concentrate long enough eventually you will let the labels go and notice only the energy.

Imagine listening to another person in this way without judgment or the need to push your views before the other finishes speaking. Try it!

Creative Write:  Spend fifteen minutes listening to one side of a conversation you usually interrupt to clarify your view. What happens when the other speaks without your comments?  Write about the experience.

Tree House

Tree House

These days a treehouse stands empty. It calls to children who clutch handhelds as fingers gain calluses from overusing the keys.

Today’s youth sing advertising jingles but cannot name the trees, plants or flowers in their own yards. Many have not experienced the wonder trees provide.

Becoming Marco Polo

Outside her childhood bedroom,
a jacaranda tree rubbed the porch railing
in squeals that led curiosity like a piper.
She sneaked out the window to climb it.

Thighs squeezed the bark; arms in hug.
She needed to touch the V formed by branches
near the ground. If only she could reach it,
then swing to the grass where adventures waited.

Night warbling continued from the tree. Muggens,
the cat, dug claws in the wood and scampered
the highway at will. Her tail spiraled in the breeze.
Finch chittering rose from limbs. Even they

flew in and out of branches or captured ants
on this Silk Road. A hummingbird made its nest
higher than her reach. When her father called,
she looked out the window, stuck in the middle.

Again she tried, clutched with her fingers
to find security in the roughness. Blood mingled
with gray bark in failed attempts to settle into the V.
Courage grew in welts on arms and legs.

In spring, an explosion of lavender blossoms
flew a fragrance of musk into the air. She took a breath
and tried once more. One shoe felt the wedge.
Another stretch and both feet arrived.

She balanced and looked upward into an applause
of leaves. She jumped from the V
to explore the world and back before dinner.
                                                - Penny Wilkes

Creative Write: Bring an experience with a tree into a poem. If you have not had an adventure, search for a tree and discover similarities.