A long time ago, I was very committed to posting some of my favorite food-related poetry on Wednesdays. What I never did was post any of my own poetry. All of my earliest writing was poetry. All of my first favorites were poems. I still think poetry conveys what prose cannot. I still think in poetry all these years later.
Counting in years
Today I used the last of the bread
That I used to make you a sandwich
Late Saturday afternoon
Today is Friday
And tomorrow will be a week
And soon I won’t be counting in slices of bread
Or days since I’ve seen you
I’ll be counting in weeks and months
And one day I’ll be counting in years
Giving up on you
Every morning
I use the coffee cup you gave me
Months ago
I chipped the lip of its wide, fragile mouth
Right on the place where I placed my own lips
Every morning
Today
I use it like a bowl, cupping the sides with each sip
These days
I drink around the chip
I can’t give up the peony-painted cup
I already gave up on you
Live oak
When we first moved in to this little house
It was shaded by a huge oak tree
Little by little
Its limbs have been stripped away
By storms, by hurricanes, by wild acts of nature
And still its trunk stands thick, twisted, defiant
It offers so little shade now, its limbs mostly gone now
Limbs that hung too close to a power line, too close to a roof, a fence
Our landlord tells us the entire tree will be gone soon
It’s a volunteer, a weed, he tells us
That should never have been allowed to grow there in the first place
I marvel at its barrel-chested trunk every chance I get
Knowing our time together is short
The tree did nothing wrong
Except to grow where it was not wanted
she eats.