I've Been Thinking

One Sunday afternoon this past July, Foster and I went to a concert at First Baptist Church, East Nashville, for a reunion of the “Baptist, Missionary, and Education Conventional Choir.” I wish you could have been there. The choir was organized in May 1972, with the idea of keeping young people in the church, off the streets, and having them do service by performing in other churches. A pool buddy of mine, Deborah Smith, joined when she was in her 20’s. At one time, ther

A villanelle is a French poetry form with certain rules. It has five stanzas of three lines (called tercets) and a four-line finish. 19 lines in all. The rhyme scheme is simple, ABA in the tercets and ABAA in the four-line finish. So, it’s fun to write. You just make a list of A rhyming words and another of B rhyming words. There’s one more complication: you have repeating lines. You alternate using the first and third lines in the tercets, and finish by using them a

It’s more work than it oughta be, it’s harder than it oughta be, and it takes twice as long as you think it should. And I reaffirmed that, under cover of darkness, misgrints creep in. I had lots of good editorial help with my book to take out the mistakes I’d made. And after the first print, I found a few errors and corrected them. That was in September 2025. Last week when I started my new villanelle, I looked at the example in my book, and I realized that the capital "T

This May Sunday afternoon, I look out my window to see Sarah squatting in front of her bright yellow coreopsis. Harre is beside her eating something off of another bush. She is on the other side of the little hedge in front of her house, so I can’t see everything she is doing. The two peonie blossoms that looked yesterday as if they might be going, are not there today, so the bush is very tidy with only three pink buds against the green. Sarah gathers together a handful of

April, 2021 From my porch at the end, I can see all the way down to the giant cottonwood standing majestic, over three stories tall. Two large swings hang from its mighty limbs. Between my porch and the tree, I see our lush rain garden and the row of condos opposite mine. I see Suzanne’s red azaleas, Sarah’s peonies starting to open, Rita’s roses about to bloom, coreopsis and columbine lining the sidewalk. It’s a wet April morning. A mourning dove and a mockingbird share t

In May, 2023, when I had to get a mammogram, I decided to lighten it up a bit. I have a bunch of Frida Kahlo stickers, so I picked one that said, "Love me, because I adore you," and another that said, "Thank You." You know the procedure: they have you go in and remove everything above the waist and have you put on a gown that opens in the front. Then when it’s time, they stand you before the machine, and they help you take out your left arm to put your breast in the ma

I got two spankings in the first grade and had to stand in the hall once. My teacher was an “old maid” named Calla Steinke. She lived a horse pasture and a street away from us with her parents in a duplex with a front porch that faced us. Her parents were deaf, and in the evenings, they’d go out on the porch to escape the heat, and we could hear every word she said. That was before air-conditioning, and the windows were always open. I don’t remember what she said, but it so

My first 12-Step program was Al-Anon, which I went to because a male nurse I knew told me I needed it. I was, after all, married to an alcoholic. But he warned me that I should understand that 12-step programs are spiritually based. Step Two says, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” He said that a lot of people call their Higher Power “God” and here in the South, “Jesus.” “You don’t have to believe in God,” he told me. “

My son brings me tea each morning when I first wake up. He gives me my thyroid. I crank up my bed to a sitting position and gather my morning prayers and the list of people I pray for. But since I got my new electric bed, once I’m cranked up, I can’t reach everything I need. So, the other day I got ready to start and couldn’t reach my glasses. I called to him. “Joel, I can’t reach my glasses.” He came in and handed them to me. “Isn’t there Life Alert for this sort of thi

MY LIFE IN THIRTY WORDS Good girl. “I’ll show you!” Married the wrong kind. Three kids, divorces, moves. Checkered career. Milton Center. Retired. Grandchildren. Nashville. Cohousing. Healing. Wrote stuff. Book. Blog. Got old. Starting over. MY LIFE IN TEN WORDS Praise be! My cup runs over Clarity Healing Hard Start MY LIFE IN THREE WORDS Help! Thanks! Wow! I got this as a writing assignment at a retreat in Bennington, Vermont, and I've given it

Back in the 70’s, when I was in my 30’s, there were big ballrooms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that people flocked to on weekends. A couple of Saturdays a month, my husband and I would dress up and go out in his red Datsun pick-up and drive to some ballroom in the Dallas suburbs. On the way home we’d stop for breakfast at a diner/coffee shop which was variously called Shoneys or Jack Brown or Mickey Mantle, depending on who owned it at the time. One night we parked, had brea

I save up all the ways Joel “mistreats” me and trot them out at family gatherings. “You see what I have to put up with?” One day Carlin asked me if we could talk about something important. She gingerly broached the topic about how good Joel is to me and that he needs to know I appreciate him, which I do. So I went to Joel and very seriously broached the subject with him. “I really do appreciate your being here,” I told him. “And if I have let you doubt it, I apologize and wil

My daughter Carlin and I went to the Centennial Park craft fair that used to be TACA, held just before Mother’s Day. The day was cool and pleasant. I bought a small neck piece from Tye Dye Mary, delighted that she was there and in good health. In one booth, a woman from Kentucky was selling purses made from recycled leather. I’m always looking for the perfect purse. This woman had one that was slim and small enough to fit under my armpit, which is where I like to carry p

I started writing verse in the 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable format when I had vertigo and couldn’t get up to write things down. My fingers could remember things my head couldn’t. I called it haiku. Most of what I wrote was a form of whining: my brain spins. I fall awry. bitter thoughts creep in like patient roaches. dreary morning still in bed hungry the kitchen is a long way off woman with floaters in her eyes waves away gnats that aren’t really there wo

I had strep throat. Two weeks ago Thursday, I woke up not feeling well and begged off strength training. Had Joel take me to Vanderbilt walk-in clinic, where they diagnosed me. I always feel guilty when I don’t go to strength training. I never feel like going, but of course, I feel great afterwards. So when I got my diagnosis, I felt impending doom because, you know, this could be the one that takes me out, but I was also relieved that there was something wrong and I wasn

Hi, I’m Essie. Welcome to my website, where I want to share poems that didn’t make it into the book, some stuff I’ve read or heard and liked, and what I’ve been thinking. I thought I’d call it “I’ve Been Thinking.” Thanks to Nia Hendricks who designed this vehicle for me. Nia lives in Germantown Commons, and besides being a website designer, she’s gorgeous, a good friend and a really fine singer. Check her out on YouTube. I put together my book, Slow Twitch, from old poems,