thoughts on dinner

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

Everything here
is so removed
from the source;

My son was shocked today
to learn beef came from cows.

If it wasn’t so easy;
if food still had
its original shock value:

Hooves, scales, feathers
& all,

How many of us would eat meat?

 

****Okay, so I try to buy free-range, grass-fed, cruelty-free meat, blah, blah, blah…. But, really, how kind are we going to be when we kill it to eat it?  This poem was generated while strolling through the meat department–all clean, tidy, and wrapped in cellophane, and not a hoof, foot, or feather in sight.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Gardenwalking–mantids and ‘maters :)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

bright jewel-toned fruit
taste sweet/acid in my mouth–
homegrown tomatoes
***|
they hiss and circle
each other, 2 small soldiers
war on the squash vine

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hidden places

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

you find this one
walking in the creek itself
& turn hard right
where the temperature
of the water
around your ankles
drops from warm
tadpole soup
to chilled lemonade

the animals know it
& come here to drink;
I show my children
prints of raccoon and deer,
and what could be either
stray dog or coyote;
footprints filling with water
pressed into the slim bank.

Here, this brook
joins the slower
sun-churned creek
after it tumbles down shale
eroded to a steep staircase
we climb up;
sharp & slippery,
the flight leading us
from spring
to high summer
as we climb.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Paleontology: weighing down/lifting up

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

Grief
is cumulative;
each new loss stacked
on the old ones;
like sedimentary rock
the weight will crush you
by layers,
given time
& enough pressure.

To survive
dig up those ancient bones
& get to know them well.

They will dry out
& lighten
like dandelion seeds,

& you can loose them easily
with 1 gentle breath,

scattering seeds of joy
sprung from ripened pain.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

the night routine (or, I’ve seen this movie and know how it ends)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

I know your day ended sometime around 6,
& you’re still out there, running circles for your habit.

It is exhausting to watch from the sidelines
& there is a 12-step program
that tells me not to

so I don’t,
for my own sanity.

It’s probably harder
to be you

& so bitter, to know our lives
go on evenly

without you in them,
like you weren’t even gone,
or ever really there
in the first place.

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Insanity

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

Like a rat
barreling towards nothing
on an exercise wheel

you are running
in the same place
you started
to run,

still expecting
to end up somewhere else
& surprised
when you fall off
exhausted,
exactly where you started

as if
how hard  you try
to get there
is more important

than actual destination.

Posted in New Free Verse, relationships | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Undomesticated

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

women in my family sow,
but don’t sew,
don’t knit, and crochet hooks
are useless between our fingers

but give us a pen, a piano,
pastels,
or a paintbrush,
and we create like crazy;

we paint a cross stitch of wild mustard
captured in oil, spreading across a field
in front of a broken-down barn,

or write of the precise way
wild strawberries
sting your tongue
with sweetness & acid
at the same time.

We can even cook
with those wild strawberries;
that 1
domestic art we did pick up,
but, please
don’t ever

buy us a sewing machine.

It will collect dust
next to the embroidery hoops
& knitting needles
in the closet.

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