Poetry Friday: Cookie Season Verse

Happy Poetry Friday everybody! It's been an age since I celebrated, eh? I have been feeling poem-dry and a little intimidated, plus Friday has a way of casting me deep into "who cares anymore!" mode. Heh heh. Ah the weekend, consumer of my motivation.

I am starting to think about New Years Resolutions and all the they entail, the idea of kicking your own butt back into shape and getting back on all the horses that bucked you recently. So, yeah...I'm back poets and poetry lovers. Poetry Friday must not be ditched. I have to be strong and keep at it. Sometimes I will just write crap. This is life. But keeping on and still writing is the the key to ever turning out good stuff. In the next couple of weeks I hope to compile and number all the poetry I've written this year as a result of this project and if that's not motivation, I don't know what is! Hooray for having output!

I am neck-deep in cookie baking right now, dough and flour from floor to ceiling, I swear it! So, it is time to do some cookie poetry. I bake a lot of cookies during the holidays. It is one of the strange projects I have invented for myself which admittedly creates a lot of work but also gives me a huge amount of satisfaction. A thinks I'm insane. I might be insane but I do bake anyway. :) I bake about 20 different varieties every year and every November I sit down and analyze the list from last year and cross out cookies that were just "meh" instead of amazing and add back anything from previous years that is getting a lot of fond remembering and then I go trolling for new recipes to add. This year I decided to make baklava, something I've made and enjoyed before but never at Christmas.... and then a poem came with it.

Baklava in Advent

I  wrote "baklava" down on the cookie list
It sounded strange but delicious to me,
Sandwiched between the gingerbread men
And sugar cookies iced with sprinkles.
I brush butter, sprinkle spiced nuts and
Gently coax the butterfly wing dough
Into softly fluted layers, rich with scent.
I preheat the oven and remember visiting
The sun-baked land of the Christmas Child.
I remember the heavy pressing heat in Galilee,
Arid country shattered and dusty like pastry.
There was a fervent squawking of hawkers
Selling whatnots in the streets of Jerusalem,
Over-laced with honey and spices drifting up
From the tented market stalls below our hotel.
I slide the finished pan into the waves of heat
Squinting to see through the invisible billows.
And upstairs, amid the squawking of my children
I address a Christmas card to my cousin in Israel
And wonder to myself, how much postage
It will require to send our family photo to that
Exotic port, home of honey and warmed spices,
Birth place of my baklava and my God.


Please do realize that I am in no way asserting that Israel is the birthplace of baklava, just that The Middle East is. I am no sort of expert on the origin of foods and this particular one is a source of great contention among peoples of various Cradle of Civilization nations.

Have a poem you want to share, either one you wrote or one you admire that another author created? You can go share too but posting a link in the comments of today's host for Poetry Friday: Robyn Hood. Happy weekend everyone!

Poetry Friday: Baking + Stress

 Happy Poetry Friday to you all! Today I am sharing a poem about catastrophe. Not all poetry is about the pretty. Sometimes there is panic and mania and life feels all at ends. It's hard to share this kind of poem. I done one other, about my sister that was this shade of vulnerable but still every little bit of open and honest about faults and weakness feels like another level of nail-biting nervous. That said, I truly believe in the feelings and the honesty that writing can bring to the world and in the bits embedded in this poem. I hope you are able to use it in small small way. 

Image by Food Thinkers via Flickr

Add caption

Image by nevermindtheend via Flickr

Chocolate Cake, Balm for All Ills

It is a small private emergency, I have forgotten that I told our hostess

I will bring dessert and there is so much to do and so, so little time.

The:disheslaundrydiaperchangeusbandpickupdinnerprepshoefindingfingernailclippinggas

tankfillingrugvaccuumingargumentsettlingtoyfixinghometidyingclothes
changing

In short: the normal harried crush of motherhood.

I am having the panicky, slo-mo meltdown that I have on these occasions,

When I am asked to be a She-Atlas and also look graceful to boot.

I feel like my spleen might suddenly leave my body without my permission.

I alternately cry and curse and do a few harried circles in the kitchen.

There is no time and I promised to arrive, grinning at her front door

The diaper bag, purse and baby on one arm and a laden plate in the other

With moth-wing flutters pantry to counter, I assemble ingredients for,

What else? Chocolate cake, balm for all ills.

I don’t take the time to level the cups or even measure some items.

I sprinkle and drizzle and let powders fly in fevered tempo.

The counter, my chest and the nearby wall are bathed in cocoa dust.

The oven has somehow magically heated while I pour and mix and fling,

And yet now, the countertop is littered with dirty dishes in uneven, teetering stacks.

So, at the last, I end up on the very tile below the sink, a portrait of desperation

Holding the shining bowl between my ardent hands, I lean over the cake pan

And have my own silent confessional about housewifery, stress and other

Desperate, laden topics; principly, my urgent need for this cake to work.

Kneeling on the kitchen floor, I pour my fragrant prayer out in swirling brown eddies

Into the buttered pan, every scrape of the spatula says: ”Please. Please. Please.”

I have whirled into 5,000 Our Fathers and done all other manner of penance once

I manage to nudge the dripped upon pan into the yawning mouth of the oven.

I stay there on the floor a moment, forehead on my smudged fingers.

And I leave my prayer baking in the mercy of the God who understands the private 
Emergencies of all manner of people, even small somewhat harried housewives

If you'd like to read previous Friday creations, feel free to click on the poetry tab at the top of the page labeled "Original Verse." You can sit reading for a good while if you have a mind, the collection is ever swelling.

If you'd like to participate in Poetry Friday yourself or read a cross section of poetic inspiration please step on over to our hostess Tabatha's blog, The Opposite Of Indifference.

Pictoral Easter

Easter was lovely. The weather has been creeping along, painfully towards spring in centimeters but suddenly yesterday the sun was beaming all over the place, flowers opened in flocks and out of nowhere all the lawns were green and every tree seems to show tips of chartreuse. Amazing how the season can change on a dime. I feel like we have come, quite overnight, into spring for good. Boy is it nice to see it! I was so ready it was making me get a charley horse.

It was the perfect weather for a holiday. I had little baskets full of goodies for the boys, and more candy than I think I ever want to hand out again (note to self for next year)....and layers of evil, fancy clothes to trap my little men into wearing. I wish I had a picture of all of us in our Eastery outfits but unfortunately, I didn't get a good shot. The camera sometimes is not on my arm. :)

Our congregation hosted a beautiful Easter service, packed to the brim with eager parishioners, very vibrant with joy over the resurrection and the promise of life and the deep love of God. I love the times when a church service has moments that feel like you get in a stadium as everyone watches "our team" go for the touchdown; that unity and energy. I was also very proud of the boys for keeping all their ties on through the whole service. After the service finished we hustled the kids out to the car and jetted to my aunt's house for a really beyond delicious holiday meal and a little festive egg hunting.

A and I come from two different traditions regarding Easter gifts for children. He maintains that all treats should be hidden and found in the egg hunt along with the eggs that the children dyed. I was raised with the tradition of Easter baskets that were waiting on the breakfast table when we came down in the morning and then a little bit of candy and some plastic eggs that were used for a much less important Easter egg hunt held later in the day. We are still trying to figure out how to meld our two experiences into a pleasant something for our kids without going to over the top that everyone is sick of celebration or either of the two of us has their personal traditions tromped over and thrown out. Tricky business, all this negotiation. What does your family do for Easter treats for little ones?

Sugaring Festival

Image via Wikipedia

We drove a great deal this weekend and managed to get all the way up to the top of the state to the part of Connecticut where there is still snow. Far away, up there it is still the end of winter and the maple sap is flowing. A generous farm decided to host a local sugaring festival for free for anyone who wanted to come celebrate. We had a grand time.

There were pony rides (Ru was a very smug fan. I wish I still could fit on a pony.), there were sap and syrup tastings, there pancakes hot off the griddle, there demonstrations of maple cookery and a big evaporator steaming up the attic of the sugar house with the effort of cooking down the farm's arboreal takings.

And then they made sugar-on-the-snow, just like in Lara Ingalls Wilder's story about sugaring off in Little House In The Big Woods.

I've never actually seen it made or tasted it, although I grew up in a family that made maple syrup. I totally get why it is described so fondly in the book. Wow.

The syrup turns into this lovely, moist taffy stuff that is a glowing gold as it spins on your fork (you twirl it up off the snow after it is ladled out) and it mixes with the cold crystals from the snow and ice and gives you this warm/cold feeling as you eat it. So great.

We left remembering just exactly how fond we both feel of this local, American product and decided that next year, maybe we'll try tapping the  maple trees by our house. There are two that would be unobtrusive to tap, in our back yard and then if we got brave we could tap the two others along the street in the front yard. Do you know any stories of urban tapping?