Our poem of inspiration is by Irish poet by Eavan Boland from her book In A Time of Violence . Having recently heard Boland read "The Pomegranate" , what struck me about it was her introduction. She said that she had wanted to write about how when her daughter reached about age 12, she realized that she had somehow "lost her." This everyday situation of her daughter growing up, was, for her, paired with the Ceres and Persephone myth that brings us the change of seasons, and she uses that and one of its central images - the pomegranate... an intriguing mixture.
Since we have already tried our hand at myth poems, let us try putting together these other two odd elements. Write about "loss" but use as your unifying image an item of food. A rather bizarre and specific starting place - give it a chance.
5/00
My husband tells me when he was a boy There were overtures of prosciutto, I was awed and a little amused Then one day, my mother-in-law She had been blessing her family for
years
This morning a man on the platform raps
the news In 1981 my daughter and I visit Santa
in his residence that quickly disappears around a corner
and into and she has a story to tell me about
the mountain All aboard the conductor cries in old-fashioned her doze over a magazine and the gaze
she breaks like the strings of a harp, and birds
rising and falling Mary
DeBow
Yes, But, I use no knife.
Susan Sapnar I know a woman who is always hungry. There was a time when I tried to keep
up with her,
Cheryl Soback REBECCA Seen in this mirror vision, Grown once to attract bees An affinity for greens, Inside the house, skin of Apollo's moon, ripe peach, demi glace, French techniques if reasons were as plentiful as blackberries our fingers and lips stained with satisfaction, Ken
Ronkowitz
Ray Cutshaw My first born was a girl, could I prepare I should have prayed there'd be no tardy
ice The delicate and fragile sweetness caught Catherine LeGault
Sacrament
the family would gather every Sunday
for a dinner that went on for hours.
The custom continued
and every holiday
my mother-in-law would come
laden with dishes that sounded like opera.
mozzarella in carrozza and
acciughe di olio;
arias of tortellini in brodo, pesto genovese,
scallopine alla marsala, and linguini primavera;
grand finales of cannoli, panettone,
and torroncini.
by their obsession with
the secret in the sauce,
the brand of the olive oil,
the age of the parmesan,
the source of the wine, and
whether the pasta was al dente.
lay dying, her only food
a cold, colorless liquid
dripping slowly through a tube in her veins.
She whispered
I'm sorry I can't offer you anything to eat
and I finally understood.
with the fruits of their ancestors;
each meal was a sacrament,
a bountiful benediction:
Take this and eat it.
Remember me and
remember where you came from.
Leaving
while we wait for the 174 to Boston.
Men arrive carrying duffels, and a woman wearing
white gloves reads the Holy Bible.
at the Willowbrook Mall.
Afterwards in that cotton-candy-giant-lollipop
transfigured center court, I put her on a train
a papier-mâché mountain.
Why do I begin to sob? Look,
here she is, coming back to me, and she's smiling,
she's been through. She asks to go again.
She asks to go again, and how can I refuse her, how
can I refuse?
and quaint surmise. And then she's through the silver doors
and gone, and I begin to think about her settling beside
a window to unpack the fruit I cut and wrapped,
over the chain fences and the old cars,
the brittle sea. And what she will hum to the hymnal chuck
of the wheels. And long lines stretched across backyards
to them in a tangling skein of coming and going.
And how the train is a wire, and what a wire sings
when it's plucked hard.
No
she is young.
She thinks
that strawberries
are God's best creation -
oozing scarlet juice
that collects the whisker
seeds when the knife
slices.
But sometimes sugar's
needed to sweeten
those not quite ripe.
mangoes are more to my
more mature palette --
mellow, yellow
without the stain,
harboring
one giant
lump
of a seed
inside.
I peel the skin
with my teeth
before I
whisper,
"Noooooow."
Bon Appetite
Skinny as a strand of angel hair pasta,
her eyes savor, garnish and consume.
Seeing almost as delectable to her as eating.
It's a gift really...
I've dined with her, breakfasted and lunched,
and she eats all the bad stuff
yet not a pound, not an inch.
Almost satiated by the thought, she tells me
where she ate last night, what was for breakfast-
I swear, she can almost make you hungry just listening.
but I got full too fast. Then I got busy with her gusto
and lost my own hunger.
We just don't have the same appetite.
Oh, I've learned to enjoy the treats with
something akin to that relishing
but small things- not too sweet.
she was summer savory.
rather than the dragonflies.
A substitute for thyme.
some sundried, but beneath that hand
filling the room with aroma, she said
we could fill our plates and leave the table
we thought the garden would provide all.
those wonderful southern summers
walking hand in hand with grandpa
through his peach orchard
being lifted high upon his shoulders
to reach for the ripest peach
watching his calloused hands
remove the peel in one long unbroken
strip with the same pen knife
he used to cut off a piece of chewing tobacco he always seemed to carry
and to remove a dozen splinters from various
parts of my anatomy from time to time
the same knife
his grandpa used at shiloh during the civil
war to cut 'hard tack'
the same pen knife i took from my
pocket last summer at a roadside fruit stand in georgia to peel the skin
from a peach for my grandson in one long
continuance strip like the interstate
that now divided what was once grandpa's
orchard
how ironic on one side a memorial garden
where he now rests
and the stand of peach trees
on the other
between the unbroken strip of concrete
me for her and her for life? I bought
a book of symbols. When we were alone
I’d hold her under baby almond trees
knowing they were first to bloom. I’d dare
to make a wish beneath their shade. I thought,
"I’ll tell her nature's secrets, making known
that almonds can bring sweetness on the breeze."
to play much havoc with those early blooms -
so delicate an icon formed to pass
to her beneath their shade. Oh, the price
she paid ! We should have stayed in warmer rooms
to build up strength within my firstborn lass.
from the almond tree has been most dearly bought.