I make bread
not the way
mom and grandma did,
kneading until knuckles were clean
of flour
but with my Kitchenaid
with a dough hook
funny how that smell
of bread, still warm
cut open
spread with butter
and honey
reminds me of them
no matter how I made it
and I smile and sigh
simultaneously
before my teeth
kiss the crust
I am a hunter
of fiddleheads and spruce tips
for a spring salad
in this time of snow still melting
on the north side of the hill
and leaves not yet raked up
at the edges of my lawn
this is the time of running sap
of mud
of crocuses deciding
it is finally true spring
and not the slow striptease
of dying winter
I am a woman of all seasons
but the promise/false hope
of all this softening
this budding
holds me
**** the NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to tell a story over time, with digressions. Well, all of my poetry does that. Here’s a stream of consciousness that meanders. Hopefully nothing dams it.
29 years after I bound up and silenced
that voice
in my head/in my heart
or wherever it is
we carry love and defend it
even when it hurts us,
that voice coming
from the same place baby chimps
listen to as they cling desperately
to mothers
who shock them
repeatedly,
likely instinct gone toxic
but still hold tight to the
cold, sterile frame
doling out formula drop by drop
because it is all they have
for sure.
29 years later I looked for you
and found you posing,
still bearded, now silver
and white
instead of the brown
that was too long for respectability
but long enough to tug while we kissed
29 years later I find you smiling,
with a wife and daughter
and realize you didn’t stop in 1990.
You went on with it, as did I,
with new loves, children, dogs, cats, and poetry
crowding out the hours.
We kept living.
I wonder, if somewhere in your mind
where those baby chimps thrive
you also cling to me sometimes,
29 years newer, thinner
and much less grounded
Or if, unlike me
you moved past our love?
I. Ingredients
Local honey.
One apple, core
not quite removed,
like the space left empty
for brown sugar and raisins,
if we were baking,
which we are not.
One name, murmured
at night
just before dreaming.
II. Method
Write the name
on a curl of paper.
Try not
to let your fingers shake
too much.
Place the paper
rolled over on itself
inside the apple
the way we leave space in our middles
for dreaming
fill the rest of the empty core
with honey
and wait for your emptiness to cure
to a perfect sweetness.
Its March and the sap started in February
so who knows when the maples will bud
in this cycle of freeze/false spring
we know so well here
but its March and we’ve all lived past
that high peak,
the one so many can’t climb every winter
and simply lie down mid ascent
but we have and soon
the peepers will shout joy
and crocuses will open their throats
to the thin sun of early April
and I will remember hope
past the crest of winter again
and still standing
to speak it
though I won’t call it dancing
This is not why we are born,
So that our deaths
and the men that make then
can become the next step
in the social medialization of outrage,
the emoji tears for a murder
scattered in bytes and not sliding across skin
Though what else can I offer
if I think
if I pray.
She said the victims, running away,
looked less real than video game characters
fleeing bullets,
but there it is
People died.
The blood in the video was not splattered, graphic ink or false colors.
People died.
Stop and think for a minute
between the coffee memes and cat videos
This is not why their mothers birthed them.
Named them.
Taught them to read, think, trust, love, pray,
Simply to become footnotes
to someone else’s message.
This is not why we are born.
Superman doesn’t fly anymore
since his heart stopped
and now, with Lois Lane dead
who would he rescue anyway?
Our problems are too tricky to solve
by spinning the planet backwards
anymore/anyway
We outgrew our old superheroes and made new ones
but like anything else made over
they are less shiny, more crass and dented,
Deadpool replaces Spiderman
and men of steel rust
in stale storage.
Susan Daniels Poetry 