Writer's Circle prompt: Love sonnet or simply love

 
Outside Philadelphia
 
I fear to say just who I love, as most
Have died or gone away.  Let’s talk instead
About the land I love, though coast to coast
World round, so many people face pure dread.
 
Here green trees dominate as summer reigns
and rain is plenty for grass and bushes, too.
I love to see the hills above the plain
And city below, with buildings in a queue.
 
We don’t get tornadoes or flood and fires
(I whisper this so I won’t change our luck)
We help those whose condition is dire
So many drowned and missing I’m dumbstruck.
 
As I aged more people I love have died
I pray the land, the beautiful land, survives.

 and

Stay at home with me
by Susan
 
Take care when standing in the sun today—
the glowing orb’s too hot to play a part
in vigils. True, more cars will come this way,
but sun will paint you lobster red as art.
 
And I would rather you stayed home with me.
While I make dinner, you can hear the news
about the heat whose waves we almost see
while you are safe inside this afternoon.
 
I love your commitment to peace, justice,
democracy, and education, but
wish you cared more for safety and for bliss
yes—bliss—as we both eat and play, you nut!
 
Let sun be your reason to stay at home.
Let sun disguise the point of this whole poem.
 
 
 (Note: Thinking of Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia.)

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writers Circle Prompt: Haiku

 People march today
to protest the dismantling
of everything.

Does this forest hold
its breath while wires buzz and cars
travel the roadways?

Windows open to
songs of distant birds and
nearby roof nesters.

Sun shines, piercing
everything. This was
worth waiting for.

Sun and clouds play tag.
Clouds appear to be winning, 
but sun fights to shine.

High humidity,
yet birds sing freely while our
freedom of speech dies.

How busy the birds
are! Rushing through the tree tops
and across the fields.
They would object to
caging an innocent, and
would flock to save her.

While the wind rests, birds
on important tasks glide tree 
to tree and beyond.

More grey, with pink and 
white blossoms shining through--
a gift from the sun.

No sunbeams today.
A gentle rain keeps skies grey
while plants and streams drink.

Nine O'clock A.M.,
a sunbeam broke through the grey
cloud cover and hit me 

Soft muddy ground lines 
sidewalks along the way to
our weekday protest.
Two old ladies sit
in rollators, hold signs facing
the road, and count beeps.

Sunny and frigid
and way too quiet despite
breeze in greening trees.
Waiting for the next
shoe to drop, picture DT
with one hundred feet.

Hold your sign high! Sing
"hands off," marching, determined,
to power centers.

Tulip tree petals
form slippery tunnels with
pink above and below.
People march despite 
rain, wind, fog, floods, broken trees,
and downed power lines.

A massive rainfall 
moves across the country, and
we wait in stillness.

While nature sings, I
sit in an early morning
meeting and listen.

I'm trying to break
the cold with music, trying
to hear the trees sing.
 
Lion-like, the black cat
guards my bed, her eyes aglow
in humid half-light.
 
Again and again
the trees counsel to let go
of fear and to thrive.
 
Camellias, tulips,
and lilacs brighten an all
grey and chilly day.
 
Can you hear the song
of trees stretching up to meet
the sun's warmth and light?
 
Our crude President!
How do trees and hills stay so
composed and peaceful?
 
A grey abundance
of rain soaks sleeping fields, and
wakes them into green.
 
"Do not fear moving
forward," the trees say, as if
we were the clouds and wind.
 
The blood moon lunar
eclipse hovered over us,
then left us alone.
 
Let's forget the world
for a minute, and drink in
a tree's spring budding.
 
What, to the forest
Is daylight savings time? Save
the climate instead.
 
Though the air is cold,
happy magnolia blossoms
dance in bright sunshine.
 
How cautiously sun
arrived, peeking through the trees
and telephone poles.
 
Daylight savings time
comes, but doesn't save us from
wrong alliances.
 
Today's sun beckons
us to come out and play, to
come out and protest.
 
No sunbeams today.
A gentle rain keeps skies grey
while plants and streams drink.
 
Coldness takes over
the entire country as its
alliances change.
 
Sunny and frigid
and way too quiet despite
breeze in greening trees.
Waiting for the next
shoe to drop, picture DT
with one hundred feet.
 
A massive rainfall
moves across the country, and
we wait in stillness.
 
High humidity,
yet birds sing freely while our
freedom of speech dies.
 
While the wind rests, birds
on important tasks glide tree
to tree and beyond.
 
Again the sun calls
for us to go outside and
live, love, and save lives.
This is spring rising
over the earth, not stopping,
not compromising.
 
More grey, with pink and
white blossoms shining through--
a gift from the sun.
 
Finally, a bit
of LA's famous sun warms
the walkways and air.
 
Sun shines, piercing
everything. This was
worth waiting for.
 
Equal night and day
edge toward more daylight and
higher temperatures.
Happily, spring will
not read newspapers, will not
freeze in a panic.
 
How busy the birds
are! Rushing through the tree tops
and across the fields.
They would object to
caging an innocent, and
would flock to save her.
 
Hold your sign high! Sing
"hands off," marching, determined,
to power centers.
 
People march despite
rain, wind, fog, floods, broken trees,
and downed power lines.
 
Dampness and grey skies
give way to sun's onslaught. Grass
sparkles and trees sigh.
Everything's taller--
even humans straighten up
and prepare for peace.
Breathe now with the trees
to strengthen spirit, mind, and
heart for endurance.
Feel the power of
deep breaths as your centers
settle on right action.
 
Sun and clouds play tag.
Clouds appear to be winning,
but sun fights to shine.
 
Windows open to
songs of distant birds and
nearby roof nesters.
 
The ICE hits where least
expected, breaking up homes
built slowly over time.
I feel even trees
are holding their breath for where
the next boot will fall.
Meanwhile what's going
on with refugees isn't
in the daily news.
 
People march today
to protest the dismantling
of everything.
Does this forest hold
its breath while wires buzz and cars
travel the roadways?
 
 

 © 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writers Circle Prompt: Write about a forest without mentioning color

A woods I know intimately

Behind my grandmother's large Victorian house was a hill.  Actually, there were 2 hills of woods with a valley of tall weeds between them, woods that I liked to imagine were in the foothills of the Catskills, though we were closer to the Hudson River than to the foothills.  This Hudson River Valley site was my playground from ages 7 through 14, as my family lived in an apartment that was part of grandmother's Victorian.  These woods were home to the famous climbing tree that I read about last week.

Two separate paths went to the climbing tree.  One passed around the weedy meadow to a break of stones that led up the sides of both the east and west hills.  Across this wall, I could turn left and climb up the east hill to the climbing tree, walking on the wall while watching out for loose slate and stone and rattle snake homes.  But my favorite way led up along the crest of the east-side hill where an apple tree, ferns, berry fronds, dogwood trees, and young pines stood back from the stony and moss-covered path.  I could walk here without brushing into the wild plants.  The reindeer moss was my favorite, as it inched over the more common mosses and lichens.  The way led up and down one rise and then another and another, each time rising higher and not going as low.  The climbing tree lay near the third crest just before a more intact stone wall with spindly pines on the other side.  The woods changed here to a pine needle carpet under pine trees.  The ferns and berries and dogwoods disappeared.  About 50 feet into this new forest, a cliff broke the hill in two--a cliff with a swift moving stream leading down toward the Hudson River.  My brother and I would slide down the shale on the least steep cliff edge and then walk on stepping stones to the middle of the stream where we sat with our legs dangling in the cold water.  We shared the stream with honey bees who were too busy to bother us.  And we never tried to follow them either, though we know they made their honey in one of the trees in the woods.

The stream, woods, and two hills were the southern border of my grandmother's 40 acres.  Her Victorian home sat in the opening to the valley full of weeds--tall flowers and tall grass, milkweed, bachelor buttons, thistle, burdock, Queen Ann's lace, and weeping willow trees.  The west woods held more varieties of trees than pines, with maple, oak, and horse chestnut the most numerous.  At least, that's how I remember it.  The ground had crumbling leaves instead of pine needles.  The hillside was a steep slant upwards with no subtle turnings.  And an old vacated chicken house sat near the bottom.  After my family helped to clean and paint the interior, this was a fine place to be alone, though I had to share it with spiders and flies as well as hornets, moths, my brother, and my cousin.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writer's Crcle Prompt: Rarity Hunger // Climbing tree

 

Prompt RARITY: Hunger

When I started writing to the prompt of rarity, I tried to think of something rare and beautiful like a gem, a flower, or a butterfly.  And, indeed, I did think of them: jade, edelweiss, and little white butterflies.  I also tried to come up with short funny stories—pretty rare with me.  But my mind kept coming back to Gaza and food and water scarcity, whereas what’s rare with me is hunger:

I pledged to fast on World Hunger Day, May 28^th,
But was weak-willed on the follow through. 
I had sandwich meat and lettuce in the fridge,
and cookies in my kitchen cabinet. 
 
If those who hunger had the same backup,
we wouldn’t be talking about genocide.
War and climate emergencies have left shelves
truly empty.  Store shelves are empty, too.
 
People are rioting for food at the few
UN stations that are open in Gaza.
The news isn’t broadcasting what’s happening
in Sudan, so it could be even worse there.
 
And I cannot even make it through a one day
fast without eating what’s on my shelves.
I would not survive the food famines of
our times.   Here the market is open.
 
What is rare in Gaza is a loaf of
bread and a bottle of wine—or water.
What is rare with me is hunger. 

 Of course, I am using the words incorrectly.  Rare or rarity refers to something precious and more so because there is little of it, whereas scarce and scarcity refers to something generally abundant but not here and now.  So is hunger rare or scarce with me?  And is food rare or scarce in Gaza?

Prompt: RarityClimbing tree

We had a perfect pine tree to grow up with.  It was a long-needled pine located on the top of wooded hill.  Alongside it ran a low stone wall made from the shale and rock of the hill and field that must have lived behind it at one time.  The pines there seemed young next to our perfect pine tree, since they were all easy to reach around with a child’s arms.  Our white pine could only be reached around with two children’s arms open wide.  Its lower branches touched the ground and the wall.  It was our climbing tree.  Three children often sat in the lower branches, swinging our legs and watching our mother or grandmother sketch.  I would climb to the second level, but my bother climbed up to the height where branches were too close together to navigate. For me, the long-needled pine was also a story tree.  The carpet of orange pine needles, especially where it touched the stone wall, seemed the perfect place for fairies and elves to have their homes.  The dog Mitzi, who ran up the hill alongside us, sniffed at the tiny doorways like a hungry monster looking for prey.  The occasional chipmunk who ran along the wall didn’t alter my stories.  After all, in the tree I was the height of a giant myself, and nothing could reach me.  

Arcadia in the Catskills
by Susan L. Chast
 
Neither sheep nor shepherds populate the canvasses
of the Hudson River School of painters and Mother
concurs in her renderings of river banks where spring-
flowering apple and cherry orchards turn to small fruit
by the 4^th of July when the corn is knee high and heat
tricks maple leaves into early oranges among pine-needled
forests where grew the climbing tree.  
 
She drew the long-limbed pine while I watched chipmunks
and fairies run and hide from me in reindeer-mossed
hobbit homes under the brown-skinned roots
of the ancient tree surrounded with rattlesnake-filled
stone walls where cows once grazed in the old days. 
I climbed quietly to a still low limb to scout until pine  
tickled my nose into a sneeze.
 
Later I dreamed untamed forests full of elves, lost
ghosts knocking on our walls and windows, and magic
so loud I couldn’t sleep and indeed the morning footprints
dotted across the driveway could have been their horses
and not the deer trespassing to chew lettuce
with the rabbits, little Peter Cotton tail in the lead
as they ran before the morning sun
 
I leaned my rake against the fence, clothes pinned
the towels on the line until they swept the ground,
and scolded the crows and red-winged blackbirds,
robins, and starlings and swifts  not to eat
the mulberries over the fresh wash and to leave
some on the tree for me to eat with milk before
I visited the climbing tree.
 
Was it gone?  Did it Brigadoon away when the night 
moon played tricks on pathways and tree limbs?
 One more rise, to climb and then another—
I knew it was closer yesterday but not as close as when
my older brother or mom came along to play or when
the faeries slipped a dime under my pillow
in exchange for a tooth.
 
Where did the faeries put the teeth?  I scuffed
the thick mat of rusty needles to find them,
reached into nooks and climbed higher to see
if they used my teeth up in the tree –and I knew
mom laughed at me, but she also told me stories
when my grandfather’s geese chased her,  bit her
heels and chased her home
 
That is when Rip Van Winkle started bowling
the skies turned angry with fat cheeks blowing
hard to shake us from the limbs--and this time
everyone ran: elves and faeries, mom and brother
and me, deer, rabbit, horses, ghosts, leaves and rattle
snakes just like the cards in Alice’s trial leaping
and falling for shelter and towels and naps
and dreams.
 

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writers Circle Prompt: Red

 
1.    Red shoes
2.    Red dress
3.    redress
4.    Red sky in the morning
5.    Danger
6.    Stop
7.    Red roses
8.    Love
9.    Valentines
10.   Red pen
11.   Fresh blood
12.   Aggression
13.   Passion
14.   Scarlet
15.   Seeing red
16.   Red car
17.   Red sox
18.   Red hat
19.   Red nail polish
20.   Red shawl
21.   Red hair
22.   In the red
23.   Red crayon
24.   Red states and blue states
25.   The Reds
26.   Cardinal
27.   Cincinnati
28.   Robin red-breast
29.   Red carpet
30.   Hollywood
31.   Tomatoes
32.   Apples
33.   Strawberries
34.   Raspberries
 

source

 Seeing Red

Clearly there’s not enough red in my life.  I brainstormed for 25 minutes on the topic, and came up with 33 red items and associations that I have no story about at all, things like red dress, red nail polish, red carpet, fresh blood, red states, and cardinals.

I owned a red car once during the time I was an assistant professor at the College of William and Mary.  I was stopped by the police 2x in it for speeding.  I argued that I was going the same speed as everyone else, but was stopped because my car was red.  No one listened.  I paid the tickets and that was that.    I have a red shawl that I use as a throw for a living room chair.  It was not a gift but an impulsive purchase.  There are no stories here.

I have never been "a red"—neither communist nor a fan of the Red Sox, Cardinals or Cincinnati reds.   I love cardinals, the bright bird of winters in the northeast.  I love red raspberries, red apples, and red skies. 

Red morning skies mean danger or bad weather.  Red alerts.  I put red Band-Aids on scratches to hide the angry red blood.   I wish band-aids could stop death from aggression and war, but others say “No more Band-Aids.  We want a real solution.”  Yes.  Just the same, I wish they’d stop on all sides.  I draw their blood with red crayons. 

I edit poems with red pens.  Red is the color of passion, of love, of valentines, of roses (though I prefer yellow ones).  Red is the color of the carpet that honors royalty and sets off the clothing of Hollywood film stars. 

There is more red in my life than there is yellow or orange.  You see it in my clothes and my living room rug and chairs. 

No apologies.
Red bursts on the scene and stops
movement. Then turns green.
 

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writers circle prompt: May

Mayday—

1)    Said three times, a distress signal.

2)    Pagans raise maypoles and weave their way around them for fertility and spring.

3)    Workers unite, celebration of working people.

4)    And last year, my mother’s death.

I’ll never be able to separate them now

I remember Mom telling me she was a red-diaper baby, carried by her mom and dad in May Day parades.  That marchers were beaten in NYC streets—something she was always worried would happen to me as I protested the war in Vietnam. She told me stories my grandmother never told me of grandpa unionizing a cloth factory and publishing a newspaper in the 1930s.  She said that the move to upstate NY came in the 1940s because of her family’s safety in the MacCarthy era.  How nothing changes--government hearings occur and recur and blur the faces of corporate bosses and law enforcement.  Paperwork haunts the innocent in the end, she said.  So, take no pictures and give no names if we go to NYC or DC in the front lines of anti-war protests: Soldiers are workers, too, coerced to kill workers abroad while the need for war on poverty grows.  Mom didn’t move upstate with her folks, but stayed in the NYC for her work with GE, manufacturing radios.  It was there that she met my father, at union meetings.  They married on the 21^st of February 1947, and moved upstate to live in Mom’s parents’ house where Mom became a housewife and mother. 

May Day was about workers, about uniting them at first and second about celebrating them.  Not work in the home like many women and children did, but workers earning a living through their valuable labor, workers that needed unions to fight for better working conditions.  Women’s issues and conditions in the home were not to be my issues until college when I discovered feminism.    

At this point, I did a google and wiki search for GE manufacturing of radios in the 1940s but couldn’t find any NYC locations.  Mom had told a story about a fire starting in her work station there—a fire quickly put out—because it threatened her notes on Union organizing that she kept on a shelf there.  I found nothing.  My story changed to me learning about work outside the home.

I remember myself as a bespectacled 12-year-old Girl Scout learning about work.  I attended a summer girl scout camp in the woods behind Jonas Studios—the location where sculptor and artist Jonas made life-sized moving dinosaurs for the 1964 World’s Fair.  A skinny-legged girl, I crowded around the mold-makers of fiberglass giants, asking questions and lingering to see the sweat behind graceful sculptures in the days when work was plentiful and beauty, too.  

Then, I skipped down the path eagerly to flag raising and our girl scout roster of chores.  Together two of us grabbed the bucket with too-sweet smelling pink goop to swab outhouse seats and come back again with the box of lime, and work done, scrubbed skin off fingers and arms to put on bathing suits and jump into the cool buggy lake happy to earn the reward: hotdogs and corn on the cob and songs, games and crafts: little red glass bead necklaces, yellow macaroni name tags, and pasty fingers.  Over and over, we washed hands as the day ended and skipped up the path, to linger with the dinosaur parts, climb aboard the bus home to meet "What did you do today?" I answered with few displays and many descriptions of outhouse chores and clay molds for moving dinosaurs.

 

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Alexander technique Constructive rest

 

Writers Circle Prompt: How do I experience power and powerlessness?

How do I experience power and powerlessness?  

I.

The first thing that popped into my head is my powerlessness in the face of war with its destruction and annihilation.  Military powers persist at war.  Few have the power to survive it.  

Only chance leaves me out of wars.  I feel powerless to stop them.  I feel powerless even to affect the news blackout that hides the worst of the atrocities.  I fantasize that a crowd of Americans or a mass of Quakers from around the world could stop war if we were willing to become human shields.  I recall the photo of one man stopping a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square—if he stopped them.  I recall the journals of Rachel Corrie, the American women standing on a porch of a Palestinian house.  She was mowed down by a tank.  Would it have made a difference if more people had been willing to defy and die?  It made a difference in Gandhi’s India.  Non-violent people were beaten and shot and killed on the way to gaining home rule.  And they won.  Much fewer people died than would have died in a war.  Those who died in this non-cooperation effort turned powerlessness into power.  The cost was their lives.  Could I do that?

No.  I don't have the courage to defy bombs, tanks, guns, or even the commands of a tyrant.  (Well, I might have the courage to defy the commands of Trump, if he stops tampering with free speech.  Time will tell.)  Right now I experience power only in the manipulation of words, regardless of whether or not I write in an acceptable form, or spend time shaping the artistry of my expression. But often the words sit in my computer rather than go public.

Two people here remind me how to have empowerment in public.  They have stepped into crowds of protestors holding signs and chanting.  Week days, they sit at the spot where the driveway of our retirement community meets a 4-lane avenue.  They hold up signs so the issues stay in the minds of the people driving home from work.  They count the beeps of supporters.  I have joined them twice so far.  The mood is cheerful, though the need for action is serious.  I felt empowered on that corner.  Again, I am merely using words, but using them publicly makes a difference between feeling empowered or powerless.  

II.

Thinking about this led me to reflect on the part of my life I spent as a director of educational theatre (at five collages SUNYA, UC Berkeley, Wells Collage, The Collage of William and Mary, and Bucknell University).  I was rarely the person who performed, but in rehearsal I felt the power to shape scenes and to empower students to find their roles, relationships, and objectives.  I think I revealed their power, a large use of courage in a small environment.  I came home each day satisfied, fulfilled.  The finished art had power, too, in public performance.  But I am very aware, as Plato and Augustus Boal remind us, that no one can think that playing a soldier or king on stage makes them a soldier or king in life.  My backstage empowerment in the role of director does not transfer into performative courage--power--outside the theatre.

Once though, in a production I helped to shape called “It is Better to Speak,” my collective of theatre activists took the drama from the stage to the street to give energy and encouragement to anti-war protestors (at the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice). We built a play with a juxtaposition of scenes of powerlessness with scenes of hope, using material that we gathered from activists across the USA--their poetry, songs, anecdotes, and newspaper articles.  Even those watching, therefore, helped to create the play.   We didn’t tell a story so much as build and then release tension scene by scene about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and how weapons were used in the past.  We sometimes narrated and sometimes danced the material, finding moves to enhance the words we were saying, particularly those from survivors of Hiroshima.  The brilliance of the material was that it travelled reshaped, depending on which performers were available.  In the audiences, we saw tears.  After the performances we were often thanked for the depth of the experience. I would love to participate in street theatre again.

We took the title of the production, "It is better to speak" from Audre Lorde's poem “A Litany for Survival.” Speaking out of her experience as a Black woman and lesbian, she said:

. . . when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
 
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

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Writer Circle Prompt: Something about Woman

 

Mom and Grandmother

All my life, I’ve sought out the grandmothers.  Not the sugar and spice and free time grandmothers on sitcoms and in commercials, but the busy ones.  You likely had busy grandmothers as well.

My mother’s mother was the first of these in my life.  She worked as a school teacher, first in elementary school with a cart for a desk and storage area, with her own dining room as an extension.  I watched her grade artwork done on 12” by 18” paper, providing comments for each student.  By the time I was in high school, she was, too, and she became my art teacher.  I suffered jealousy when she called on others instead of me.  I experienced anger when she drew on my drawings to “correct” them.  I felt pride when she was honored by the rest of the faculty. 

Meanwhile, at home, she hired me to sew hems, to polish piano and chair legs, and to dust photographs and paintings in the vast Victorian she owned and lived in alone and unafraid.  While my mother’s job was us children, super grandmother gardened, painted, commanded, and drove us, sometimes, crazy. She never babysat without assuming we were a work force.

Away from home, I found myself drawn to this type of grandmother figure.  I adopted them, old women with public and private strength, witches in another time and place, with magic names as my mentors and role models.

One was Mary Hunter Wolf, who led improv workshops through her very own Shakespeare theatre in Connecticut.  Her names all had power.  Mary was my grandmother’s name, and both Hunter and Wolf carried a mythic sense with them.

Another was Ellen Stewart of LaMama Experimental Theatre Club, the Mama of off-off Broadway and the champion of international diversity on stage.  When she spoke at conferences on non-traditional casting, she emphasized the importance of making spaces for theatre from non-European sources, not trying to rewrite white plays.  La Mama stages and rehearsal halls were full of theater from other countries as well as ours.  She herself employed international casts—and their languages—in Shakespearean and ancient Greek plays.   At home in La Mama, she and everyone else pitched in to do the work.  One story about her has a woman asking her about the artistic director of La Mama while she was cleaning the toilets in the lobby restroom.

Rather than explain all my grandmothers—the Marys and Ellens, and Bernices and Sojourners, and radicals, and women in high government offices and everyday neighborhoods, let me say that I longed to be a grandmother of the adopted kind, as I had no children of my own.  I can’t remember if was the writer Tony Morrison or the historian and musician Bernice Reagon who told me long ago, that the first thing she did on taking up residence in a new town was to adopt a grandmother for her son—and for herself.  I don’t know if she meant the busy kind.  But I did the same until very recently when I chose a retirement community with bunches of grandmothers with stories to tell.  I have aged into being a grandmother, too, and I’m ripe for adoption.  I’m no longer active in society, but I have stories to tell.