never touch ground
She runs about
in a skitter pattern,
darts a wind dance
under a fall tree,
her hands grasp
at leaves still in the air,
arrest them in flight
before they make
touchdown.
She catches treasures,
pins them on a stick
and so she creates
an airborne stick tree
that she gifts to me.
I display the child’s art
on the mantle:
an everyday tree
in bright colored magic
of falling fall leaves
*
poetry laureate of giraffe soup
—after Diane DiPrima
For my oath of office,
I promise to practice spiritual ecology.
I’ll go into the yard and garden with children.
In honor of this occasion, we’ll play outside,
make giraffe soup, and share it with you.
We will raise an word altar to soup.
Two granddaughters and I make soup.
Aili, 4, fetches a colander from the kitchen for a pot.
Wrenna, 7, brings a cornstalk from the field for a spoon.
The girls toss in blades of grass and weeds and stir it.
The lawn yields grass, plantain, knotweed and pepper grass.
The girls run back and forth to the pot, adding ingredients.
The girls pick vegetables from the box gardens out front.
They nibble lettuce like a rabbit,
pick more lime and red leaves, toss them in the pot.
I break off two green leafy stems of shallot, one for each girl.
They bury their noses in onion smell.
Wrenna says, Greens give the broth good flavor.
Wrenna shows me green worms on a curly walking stick bush.
I say, They are catkins, a springtime flower.
Climate change has messed up this poor plant.
Green worms season the soup.
The girls strip fronds off a Japenese Painted fern,
select driveway stones, scrape in a pinch of mud.
Wrenna says, These add more flavor. Aili says, Yum.
In the bottom garden, girls pull off marigold heads.
Wrenna says, They chase away bugs.
Aili eats several ripe cherry tomatoes,
gathers handfuls of pink wild geraniums,
their blossoms dangle like clusters of tri-cornered hats.
Wrenna finds a prickly ball on a cone flower, I cut it off,
the seed head looks like a wooly caterpillar in soup.
The girls pick herbs from containers on the back porch,
toss pinched off leaves into the basket.
In goes basil, thyme, sage, oregano, and rosemary.
Wrenna adds one red jalapeño for zest
and says, Herbs make soup smell delicious.
I snip off rainbow stems of Swiss chard,
yellow, orange and red fall colors finish this soup.
My vow is:
Work as hard as the girls to make giraffe soup.
Share the soup with you in poetry and art.
Honor nature by saying the names of plants and ingredients.
Prepare a dish that’s good enough to feed fairies.
Savor the magic of colors, smells and sounds in herbs,
flowers, grass, dirt & rocks.
Always reserve a place at the table for Mother Earth in thanks
for her bounty
https://litshark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Lit-Pup-Mini-1-Issue-two-page-spread-WITH-COVER.pdf
Date Published: March 29, 2025